Are they the best in the world ? Most of the places I've read online mention them or Ontrack.

My HDD's platter is apparently scratched and a premier company in India(Stellar Info) evaluated it and returned it (4 years ago) saying they cannot recover any data and gave it back to me. Prior to this the HDD was sent to a local data recovery guy who didn't have any clean room or a real data recovery lab. I was young and stupid then and couldn't even think of paying more than $100 for data recovery. I suspect the problem developed with the local data recovery guy. Originally the drive refused to spin up after a short circuit of the SMPS and motherboard.

My question is if drive savers say they cant do it does it pretty much mean that nobody else can recover the data? If no, who would you guys recommend I send it to?

Thanks

This discussion has been made a number of times in this forum.

I think marketing lines like "if we can't do it, no-one can" are really good for a comic book.
We have recovered data from disks that were sent to the companies you mention and were claimed as un-recoverable. Many other pros in this forum have done this too.
Not because we are better than them or have better equipment than them or deeper knowledge than them(not necessarily, at least), but because we focused on a specific problem which required attention, time, knowledge and patience. And were dedicated to that.

My guess is, that when these companies have, lets say, 200 incoming disks per day, they would focus on the disks that more likely will give them a good outcome.

I have even heard of *some* company which refused to take a case, cause that would spoil their great statistics.

Just my thoughts, nothing implied here.

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i agree with northwind.

Drivesavers has their hands in everything it seems, there marketing people are everywhere. They know how to get people to drink their kool aid ( no offense). With the amount of marketing people that work there and quantity they receive in daily there is no way they can spend a lot of time on a hard drive unless the client is willing to spend way too much. My guess is that they knock out the easy recoverable drives for cheap and quote out the difficult jobs high to get the client to decline their service. Drivesavers has only one location.

We do get drivesavers jobs in here from time to time and yes we can recover about half that come in.

As for Ontrack, when i was working for them back in the late 90's in their DC satellite office. Every job was critical and handled to the best we could. I am not sure if things have changed tho, but they have 4 full operation location in the US and a handful in other countries and A lot more engineers then drivesavers.

If the platters are crashed there is probably not a lot that can be done to the drive depending on how bad it is. But if it is not an easy fix for drivesavers , expect a high quote.

I don't have any experience with drivesavers, but Ontrack is not even close of the best DR company for sure.
I've had cases where they did not get the data, and we got a good part of it.

Even with severe platter damage it might be possible to pull off some data, but main problem is the success/cost ratio. I recently had a case involving platters with scratches. In the end it turned out that the HDD had three separate (not on top platter) regions which did insta-kill heads. I did qoute the job with time and material for doing three head swaps, but ended up doing six of them. Managed to image roughly 95 percent of the disk, but only 65 percent of the wanted files were ok. A typical lose-lose case. Me working for free, and customer not really happy (having no idea what cheap deal he got).

As suggested in the posts above, I reckon such jobs are turned down by larger DR companies eagerly monitoring time spent and profits. I should probably learn from them, but occasionally pride and stubborness kicks in...

A second opinion is always good. But beware of companies being overly optimistic in such cases. After all, data can't be recovered from areas of physically damaged media.

I agree, but assuming just 5% of the surface is damaged, this does not mean 5% of data is bad. In fact it could mean a whole lot more than 5% of data is affected.

I guess the problem with larger companies is not the technical capabilities, but as mentioned previously the cost and time requirements. To a smaller firm with less active jobs to work on, extra time and resources can be put into each case. With cheaper marketing budgets, less overheads and less employees the cost of each job can be kept lower while maintaining a good service, hence being cost effective.

In a larger firm this would not happen as the resources and time required to deal with a job like this would outweigh the value of the job.

I have to agree with what you've all said - for a business it's all about profit. When you have such an enormous workload it makes financial sense to bang out the 'quick, predictable, easy' jobs and get the money in than to have a technician working for hours and hours on a case with damaged media killing numerous donor HSAs. Not that I know if this is what certain big DR companies do of course, but judging by what people have said it here it seems quite plausible.

Then you have DR guys who have a relatively small workload and can afford to spend even days on one job as there aren't 100 drives in line for recovery, even if it means only breaking even on a case you have a happy customer (hopefully) and some more experience under the belt.

I've had a few jobs which have been to the big DR companies in my country where the customers have told me the previous DR place said they couldn't recover the data. After assessment they've only required straight head swaps and have been a success on my side, so it baffles me sometimes.

Either way, quality over quantity will always be my preference as I'm sure it is for everyone here too.

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Totally agree

Thank you guys. Appreciate your take time to reply your thoughts. I will know no later than coming Monday. So will keep you all posted.

Thanks.

Guys bad news. Drive savers said they cant do it. They said the head suffered a crash and also the motor is damaged. Would any of you be interested in attempting a repair job?

which means they will attempt to try and do it

Just out of curiosity what was the cost they said it would be? Attempt fees?

Zilch. I dont mind paying a fee for a thorough evaluation.