They charged 375$, 180$ for parts and 2 hours of labor and the company was US Techlabs. The parts prices seemed a little steep though. They had good reviews online, but I didn't like how the handled my case after I paid them.



I will do that when I get home.

We're WD authorized if you want someone to take another shot at it.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

I have ever heard of this company and wonder how good they really are. The price for parts is actually reasonable for data recovery...it isn't unusual for labs to spend a lot more than that on a suitable donor. What I don't understand is what the $375 charge is for if they were unable to recover anything.

I find this case somewhat baffling, as it should be a relatively simple recovery...even with a head change. From my perspective, the thing that might cause the most difficulty is if you somehow killed the original U12 ROM and there is no backup ROM in the drive's SA.

That said, there are always cases where we expect simple and get crazy difficult...always have a few of those here at any point in time.

I think you should ship the drive to Jon at Data Savers for another look. The problem is, now, he not only has to figure out if you did something to make it worse or if US Techlabs did something to make it worse. Every time someone touches that drive, they have to get a clear picture of the history and have to have faith that everything is as they are told. (ie, the ROM is the original on the original PCB, the platters haven't been flipped or removed, it is the original head stack, nothing was done to mess around with the SA modules, etc)

Good luck.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I've never heard of that company. The $180 for a donor seems to be a normal price from a drive reseller. Did they give you the donor back? I hope they didn't charge you the $375 for a failed recovery. The $375 for a 1TB head transplant seems really cheap to me.

+1 for Jon at Data Savers if you want a second opinion.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

375$ was for an attempt to recovery the data since they had to purchase parts. I am basically in the same spot I was in, minus 375$.

Hey guys, I think I might have just had my money taken. As I state earlier his exact words in the email were "The R/W Heads on the drive were replaced, a new PCB was programmed and tried, but these options didn't work either." thatdellguy looked up and found a BBB complaint against the company and after looking at my drive it appears that it wasn't even opened. I will definitely be sending it to Jon now and filing to get my money back from this guy.

Here is a link to the drive after I got it back http://i.imgur.com/sHZyBwC.jpg

Calling them r/w heads instead of just heads seems strange to me.. I am pretty sure you won't get shenanigans from Jon, and probably some answers to boot. Unfortunately there is only so far you can go to vet someone, and sometimes you can try all you want and still not be satisfied as we saw recently. The old carnival saying is "You pays your money, and youze takes your chances"

good luck

That drive was never opened...It looks like they don't even try to exchange heads on your drive from the photo...Very very strange.

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www.datasave.ro

Agree. That drive hasn't been opened.

Something fishy going on here

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

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Just wanted to say thanks guys! Jon at data savers really came though! Was thoroughly impressed with the speed at which they were able to diagnose my drive. I disputed my charge and got all of my money back!

Oh and I am now making a backup of all my data. At least I was able to recover from this lesson!

I believe this post should be a sticky.

Well done, Jon!!

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

I can't believe you were initially charged for a non-recovery as well as being told they had done a head swap, when it's obvious they hadn't even opened it. Sharks!

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
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