A Review of Harddrive Data Recovery Experts

A harddrive data recovery service can help you if you absolutely need to get that broken disk running again. If your computer doesn’t recognize your hard drive, or if it’s making strange noises, your best bet will be a hard drive recovery specialist. Using off the shelf file recovery software on a damaged harddrive will only lead to further damage.

If you’ve tried to look for a hard drive recovery expert, you’ll quickly notice that there are hundreds of companies offering file recovery services. There are also many that will try to sell you file recovery software. If you feel bewildered by this glut of options, I’ve done some research to present you with what I think are some of the best harddrive data recovery experts.

You’ll want to contact one of these companies if you absolutely need to recover your data. These companies will give you a free consultation and a good-faith estimate. They all have toll-free numbers for quick 24-hour contact.

Most importantly, the companies listed below all have clean rooms. A data recovery company without a clean room isn't serious about recovering your data.

You could go for a lesser company that offers you a fixed-price data recovery before they’ve even looked at your harddrive, but you’ll get what you pay for. It’s likely that a fixed-price recovery company will say that your data is unrecoverable when they merely deem it too expensive to do the recovery. Let’s face it; no company wants to do a job that they think will cost them considerably more than that fixed-price quote.

You could also give your hard drive to a local computer repairman, but he will just have to send it out to harddrive data recovery company anyways.

Recently, our local newspaper editor had his hard drive die. Unfortunately, his computer repairman sent the hard drive to a company half way across the country that didn’t even have a clean room. This company just had to forward the hard drive to another company that could actually repair the broken hard drive. Unfortunately, this extra time involved in this rigmarole caused the Editor to miss his deadlines.

Data recovery companies which cannot repair hard drive make up the bulk of what passes for data recovery. In actuality, these companies are just “file recovery” companies. They hope that here is nothing physically wrong with the hard drive. They are capable enough in fixing a corrupted file system or recovering a deleted file but they do not have the ability to open a hard disk drive and replace a broken read/write head. So, if you’re pressed for time, be sure to avoid file recovery companies.

I don’t mean to demean file recovery companies. I merely want to make you aware of their limitations. If your disk is still readable and all your need to do is recover a deleted file, then a file recovery company or even do-it-yourself software will get the job done.

Selected List of Reliable Harddrive Data Recovery Companies

Ontrack Data Recovery – Ontrack is one of the best and biggest data recovery companies in the world. They have over 30 locations around the world. If you need to deal with a large company or if you need an ongoing relationship for various types of recovery services, Ontrack is a safe bet. If you send your raid data set to a no-name recovery company, you’re likely to be embarrassed if things go wrong. However, you won’t be embarrassed with Ontrack because you’ve done the best that you can do.

First Advantage Data Recovery Services – There have 15 labs around the United States and they have a 24 emergency number to get you out of any hard drive scrape. This is a first rate harddrive data recovery company that has the engineering manpower to get your data back. They will evaluate your broken hard drive for free.

DriveSavers Data Recovery – DriveSavers only has one location on the west coast of the United States but they’ve had a big impact on the drive recovery industry and helped a lot of people. This is a solid and reputable recovery company. They even have counselors to help you deal with the emotional trauma of losing your data. So if you’re overwrought about that lost data and need a friendly voice to talk to, you can’t go wrong by giving DriveSavers a call.

Data Recovery Group – DRG has 4 labs in the United States. They’ve been recovering data from failed hard drives since 1986. That’s a long time in the hard drive industry. They have the parts and the experience to get most broken hard drives working again. Now, they don’t get your hard drive working so that you can keep on using it. That wouldn’t be wise. The only purpose in fixing a broken drive is to recover your data, because once a drive has gone bad, its safer, and cheaper in the long run, to just buy a replacement drive and reload your data.

DTI Data – DTI is located near Tampa, Florida. They have been in the harddrive data recovery business for 10 years. They have a clean room to safely open up a hard disk drive and they have an engineering staff that keeps up with the latest hard disk drive developments.

Midwest Data Recovery – Despite the name, this recovery company has labs on both coasts of the United States and in other parts of the world. Like all the other companies in this list, they also have a clean room.

If you are considering sending your drive to a harddrive data recovery company not in this list, be sure to ask if they have a clean room.

Return from Harddrive Data Recovery Experts to Data Recovery