Hey everyone, im just gathering information about data recovery companies, anyone dealt with both of these?
im looking for:
communication
price
expertise
location
being in control of your drive and knowing exactly where it will be (delivering the drive yourself for example)

so far i gathered that to recover my hd which is 1.5tb to a drive ill provide 2tb, will cost me around £100 for PCImage DECONTAMINATION and at least £300 for the recovery, whilst Seagate Data Recovery will charge around £70 for evaluation only, thats all i know so far

expertise, well i only know seagate as a professional company, but after reading things like PCWorlds data recovery services (bad apparently) it makes me question big companies

location, the seagate london data recovery place is only 40 minute drive whilst PCImage is around 4 hours, but i dont even think you can talk to a specialist in person with seagate, whilst PCImage has a walk in store

and with being in control, i dont want to simply "send my drive" and risk it getting lost, bumped, mis handled, and not knowing where it is

it would be great if anyone could shed some light with these companies

...it seems that our advice is not of interest to you. Why do you keep asking?

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Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

I think he's asking for independent advice, preferably from former customers. Have you dealt with either Seagate Data Recovery or pcimage as a customer?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I chat with Sean (PCImage) almost every day...and he has helped point me in the right direction with a few data recovery projects over the years.

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Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

If you want a customer review then I've used PCImage for, well, dozens and dozens of recoveries. Communication excellent, turn around excellent, results excellent. I even get a free ballpoint pen with every recovery which now fill every corner of our workshop!

Firstly, I don't believe Seagate will examine an OPENED drive for £70. Not for a second.

Secondly I'm beginning to get a bad feeling about this case with SO many questions repeated over and over again before we've even seen the drive! We get far less interrogation with jobs from the police, government departments and the massive multi-national companies we deal with on a regular basis.

We've never refused a job, but I'd be quite happy if the OP took his drive to Seagate, or someone else to be honest

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

if its possible to collect more information why it cant hurt can it, so im just making sure i make the right choice before i make any snap judgement, surely as a recovery company you would understand that, it people are willing to pay hundreds for recovery its obviously important so its only natural to consider all the possible options

im not bashing your company what so ever, im saying that the choice ive made comes down to these two companies, so guys, give me advice? not whos the worst or something, thats not what im doing

and seagate £70 is evaluation only, (not including open drive costs as it doesnt state)

In our Edu sector, We deal with dell, HP and Acer mainly for supply of majorority of network neets, switches, PC's and laptops etc.

Constantly see this type of thread on our list.. One says HP support is great, dell is rubbish, another the opposite.

You start going down this path of finding the very best choice, and you will be chasing your tail. It will come down to once you have your answers from, say, 10 people.. ok, now how valid are the answers now.. what exactly did they get fixed, was the answer relevant.. Your data will be obsolete before you have an answer. OK, so maybe you get an answer to your satisfaction.. you go to the chosen place, and "Joe" who previously gave the fantastic service that swayed you to go there, has now left and "Bill" is pretty darn sick of people dropping hard drives.

I think you already have plenty of info to make a choice, but thats just IMHO.

Tomas, what sort of qualifying statement are you after?

Although most can understand your concerm can you try and imagine some of our frustrations?

Members here with a combined total of over 10,000 contributing posts have recommended pcimage.
pcimage has been here for around 8yrs, and contributed over 5,000 times: he is not some fly-by-night.

I've seen people requiring life saving surgery require less validation than this

K

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Когда хочется кушать – съешь всё.
Голод не тётка!

i was more after a comparison how PCImage compares to Seagate in terms of the points ive pointed out

PCimage is on Santas good list. As for Seagate - Santa aint got enough coal...
In this world , if you cant trust Santa, who CAN you trust ?

Source : I saw the list and even double checked.

Jokes aside, to me - both are capable. Seagate is a huge corporate entity. Pcimage is "pro next door" =))

Hey everyone, thought id mention that i finally went through with the data recovery with PCImage, i actually went in person from london to peterborough to physically hand delivery the dead hdd and a fresh new hdd to the shop, took ages to get there but when i did everything was simple and easy, simply handed in the drive, they already knew of me coz of the email communications, had an overall summary of the problems of the hdd and the process of the recovery.

the turn around recovery was incredible...next day they identified the problem, i confirmed with the fix, and day after it was all recovered on my spare hdd, instead of picking it up in person they first cloned the hdd to a backup, and put another clone on my new fresh hdd and sent it back to me (this way if the package was lost they still had a clone, which i couldnt do as i didnt know how to fix the problem myself)

Here were the problems found:

1. Media degradation (bad sectors), possibly caused by the contamination, but also possibly the initial underlying issue in the first place.

2. Firmware module corruption, in particular the translator. Almost certainly caused by improper use of an “internet fix” which does not take into account entries in the NRG

3. Quite possibly some file system damage, the extent of which is unknown as of yet.




So for anyone on this forum wondering...go ahead with PCImage, thumbs up from me

Way to go Sean. Nice work!

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http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Great going PCImage! One more difference: Seagate (usa) does not report back with details of recovery even if asked as PCImage did.

My 2 cents....Amsterdam is a lot further drive than Peterborough from London.