I am wondering if the no recovery no fee model is sustainable any longer.

Is it fair to say the consensus is that current disk technology has lower possibility of success for head / motor issues?
I am reading on this forum that some models have as low as 1 in 8 chance even with exact match. For recovery companies to carry the cost of sourcing donor parts when there is such low prospect of success seems to me to be unsustainable.

Laptops are starting to move to SSD, meaning no mechanical recoveries.

Then there is technology like PC3000 UDMA which is priced so highly that it will be obsolete before it has repaid for itself.

Data recovery companies appear and disappear all the time but the last 3 months I am seeing more disappear than appear. Others are jumping into forensics so that there are too many forensic companies. I am starting to believe there are easier ways to make money then data recovery.

Any thoughts?

Well, on some things I agree with you.
I think it will tender to disapear some DR companies as there will be more unrecoverable jobs, and specially those companies who don't have a good lab and knowlegde will tend to disapear as it will be hard to compensate the jobs they won't do.
But on other way, I think this will take some years to DR business won't give good profit.

The key to our success is being able to quickly find matching drives and firmware. I do not know about you but I am spending 90% of my time looking for matching drives and 10% of my time fixing them. I think if you really did have a 100% matching drive you can fix just about any drive. There were many times that I thought I had a match but it turned out that it was not an exact match. I have several hundred of different drives in stock. I am sure that all of you do too. Every time someone posts a request for a drive on this forum, how many of you actually look if you have a matching drive and actually send it to him?

If every member of this forum made a list of their drives they have and put them together we would have a list of just about every drive ever made.

We need to figure out a good method of sharing our drives.
Together we will succeed, individually we will fail.

Fellow HD Guru's could always put up there stock on private Ebay stores. That way it would be safer and you could see peoples ratings. It might take some people a long time to survey there inventory but it would make donor searching simple. Perhaps even rent out drives that need hotswaps or pcb boards with a deposit. It could cut costs, raise your success rates, and make you more money. Some sellers on Ebay are starting to catch on and charge outrageous rates for the smallest of drives. It's really starting to piss me off to see a 30Gb WD HD I need going for $199 dollars.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Fellow HD Guru's could always put up there stock on private Ebay stores. That way it would be safer and you could see peoples ratings. It might take some people a long time to survey there inventory but it would make donor searching simple. Perhaps even rent out drives that need hotswaps or pcb boards with a deposit. It could cut costs, raise your success rates, and make you more money. Some sellers on Ebay are starting to catch on and charge outrageous rates for the smallest of drives. It's really starting to piss me off to see a 30Gb WD HD I need going for $199 dollars.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Thanks for the replies. Maybe I should have asked if strategically it is still viable to provide data recovery services. Considering factors such as the opportunity cost, the reducing success rates, the cost of recovery tools and the gradual SSD roll-out.

Almost 2 years had passed since this thread was created. All the bitter and sorrows during those days had turned into knowledge, valuable skill and confidence.

Still, DR is the best field for me. My company is not going to disappear, that's for sure. I've been in this field too long and invested a lot. There's no way to hold or step back, the option is only step forward.

Yes, I know SSD & flash based devices are coming into the market. As always, storage system will surely develop, but we will also. And as previously, we were, are and will be willing to learn more to explore this technology.

Storage manufacturer's slogan : Innovations never stop everyday

DR slogan : Investments never stop everyday



LOL

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I charge diagnose fee. If dr accepted it is not charged. Period.

some company`s going down cause home users dont have money to recover family pictures etc.

so which company`s are going down? company where profit is based on home users drives.

if i`ll have to chose recover my files from home pc or pay rent - i think would go for rent

hddinfo

That's sad but it's true.

I give an abstract :

Two exactly similar drives sent in by customers on the same day, at the exact same time (WTF ?!?!? - I think I woke up from the wrong side of my bed ) . They do not know each other. One customer is desperately hoping recover his data because it's very important corporate financial data. The other customer is home user who just wants some of family pictures - he said "data is not too important and just hoping the fee is affordable"

Those two drives happen to have same damages. You know you need to find exact donors to do recovery and after that, do Clean room works, swap heads, clone sectors, etc, and so on until data recovered.

But sometimes, situation is not as easy as you hope (or as always you encounter).

After we look for donor in our stock and search around everywhere, We only got ONE donor. THE ONLY ONE 100% healthy DONOR for THOSE TWO damaged drives ! The drive is a very old model and not available anymore.........

Now, tell me, which one of those two damaged drives I should recover first ? The corporate customer with 2,000 USD fee (and of course with 50% initial payment in advance), or home user with 200 USD fee ? Try to be as objective as you can. One"0" makes a big difference,

And, think again, what if after you finish the first drive recovery (whichever you chose from those two), the donor got damaged also and can not be used anymore for second recovery attempt on the other drive. What will you say to the other customer ? Will you advise the other customer to find another DR company to help him (knowing it's difficult to find another donor for the drive) or you just tell him that you can "help" but he must wait for new donor found (infinite and unpredictable time - to be exact ) ? Remember : time is money

So, whoever read this post, corporate customer or just home user, please understand the situation. I do not want people to think that we are asking for outrageous fee. It's not just that easy to be one of us.......

Sincerely,
Jonathan

PS : This is just one of my stupid post. I just feel so exhausted explaining to customers what the hell we do for "that outrageous fee" - with so many zeroes (in my country, that 2,000 USD ~ 20,000,000 rupiah !! ) on the quotation for their data. I have enough people grumbling at my place - point at me as "someone trying to rip off money from their pockets", "pushing to maximum limit for their Visa cards", and etc, etc, etc...........Enough for all of this...........

PPS : the drive is old 40 GB Maxtor Altair with 8 heads, all damaged, if that helps clearing the situation

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Well to me it is obvious..

You do the 2000 job, then tell the home user that you need to get spares for their drive and it may take some time. Then, if they are prepared to wait, you can try to get spares, otherwise they have the choice to take it away.

My logic is that if you recover the home user first, the business user is more likely to want to go somewhere else as the data is critical. This can give you bad publicity, especially if they take it somewhere else and get the job done cheaper. The home use is likely to be more patient as the data is not so critical.

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If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you probably don't fully understand the situation. ... Mr Kipling

https://www.mjm.co.uk/

Hi,

If it was with my cases i will give the same price.

Same problem, Same work, so Same PRICE.

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ZeBong
" что случилось в России - останется в России "
" Россия еще раз"

I operate the same as zebong. Both jobs get quoted at the same price. The first one to approve the quote gets the use of the part drive first. Jobs are quoted on the level of work and the usual other factors. I don't charge more for corporate jobs than home user jobs. I feel that is price gouging, simple as that.

The part goes to the highest bidder. Thats business, thats life

For us, both projects would be the same price...likely around $900. We would probably do the business client's project first, as they are likely under a time constraint, where the home user's pictures can wait months, if need be.

I agree with Hexed, two different prices is gouging the customer. From time to time, we will give discounts, based on circumstances (student, charity, etc), but we always start at the same price.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I have to partially agree with Luke. Sometimes and nowadays often there are circumstances where some flexibility leads to get the job, rigid criteria will bring to "quote rejected". A careful analisys of what it would take to get the job done is needed. Of course "flexibility" does not mean to "take briefs off" , a balance of common sense, meet customer needs and of course business continuity is the key. However, corporate DR and private DR needs are different. Agree also 100% with HDD Spaz about parts : when deciding where the part goes, the highest bidder wins.

Many thanks for all comments, dear friends,

scratchy, HDD Spaz, BlackST,

Of course that's my decision (without even thinking for a minute)

zebong, Hexed, lcoughey,
In a perfect world, yes...I would agree with your opinion, unfortunately we are not living in a perfect world

Same price for same case, for different level of customers (no offence to home users) is not "the only" solution. I'm aware of the other possibility :

What if those two customers actually know each other ? Say, they are just pretending not knowing each other in front of me. They are just testing how much I would give for the quotations.

And now they found out that I give different pricing because of "status", and both rejected the offer ?? well....

What will be the best solution ?

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That´s not really good...

If they are testing you, thay´s why the same price, for the same job.
Them we can talk about "home user " and say iff we dont need the data urgent it can be do, "less price" but with more time.

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ZeBong
" что случилось в России - останется в России "
" Россия еще раз"

This is simple too. We offer home users a service that takes considerably longer than our standard service levels, we also offer it to business users if they are prepared to wait.

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If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you probably don't fully understand the situation. ... Mr Kipling

https://www.mjm.co.uk/

What would you guys pay to "Rent" a suitable PCB and how would it work?

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.