You depend on your data. So when you experience a data loss, it is important to make an informed decision and select a trusted data recovery specialist that you can depend on to send your storage media and valuable data.
A quick search of the internet reveals countless organizations which boast of being able to recover data from tapes, hard drives, RAID arrays, and other storage devices. "Mom and Pop" or "garage" organizations may offer basic data recovery services utilizing off-the-shelf software that can recover your personal photographs and documents from your laptop's or personal computer's hard drive. However, if the data you cannot access is priceless and irreplaceable or is critical to your livelihood and your business continuity depends on that data.
Below are just a few of the false promises and misperceptions that most people are subjected to while researching data recovery services:
 | | Free Evaluation |
You get what you pay for- you know your drive is broken, why send it to someone just to have them tell you what you already know. Once your drive is in their hands you are at their mercy. Expect a phone call explaining to you how there is an additional fee for an invasive evaluation and additional cost for parts.
 | | FREE Phone Analysis of damaged Media |
Nobody can possibly know the condition of the platters in the Head Disk Assembly without looking inside the drive?
 | | Guaranteed estimates |
(They guarantee it could cost from $299.00 to $3500.00)
 | | Success rate of 95% |
Exaggerated success rates are common in the data recovery industry; there are some circumstances that make it impossible for anyone to recover data no matter what.
 | | We Can Get Your Data Back...Guaranteed! |
(Impossible to guarantee such a thing or they would advertise 100% success rate)
 | | 24 to 48 hour turnaround |
While this is possible, it's not true a great deal of the time. At times parts are needed that are not in stock and can take a few days just to locate and that doesn't include shipping time.
 | | FREE Online Quote Consultations |
Nobody in the data recovery business charges for a quote consultation.
 | | Will beat any competitors' price |
Some "garage labs" out there are charging $99.00 for an attempted recovery. This is surely just some guy with a data recovery software program that might work 1 out of 100 times. Get the $99.00 quote and offer it to the company making this promise: "Will beat any competitors' price". Good luck!
 | | We guarantee the lowest price in the world for hard drive recovery |
This is quite a statement however; you get what you pay for. If the cost of a recovery exceeds the price you were quoted you are not going to get the level of service you expected. No company goes into business to lose money. Your drive will be deemed unrecoverable and returned to you. This is why many other data recovery companies state that they have recovered files from a drive that another data recovery company could not retrieve. The files were in fact retrievable from the start.
 | | No one has more experience at recovering data |
Take note of when the company was founded. There are hundreds of fly by night companies claiming to perform data retrieval that come and go every year. Many times these companies will lead you to believe they have recovered "thousands of gigabytes of data" over so many years when in fact they have just popped up out of the blue and who knows how long they will be around.