Why Drive Analysis Will Never Be Free

"Why do I have to pay for the analysis?"

I hear this question regularly. A customer brings in a drive holding ten years of his life, hears the price of the diagnosis and asks why I don't do it for free. After all, the shop around the corner quotes repairs for nothing.

I understand where the question comes from, so here goes.

A drive is not a laptop

A laptop ruined by clumsy diagnostic attempts can be replaced. You buy a new one and that's that. You cannot buy your data.

Ignorance, lack of awareness + the urge to prove yourself very often = a drive from which nothing can be recovered any more, or one where recovery costs far more than if the drive had simply waited for the lab. And this is not theory. Drives regularly reach me after someone's "free" attempts: opened on a desk, powered up over and over with damaged heads. Such a head behaves like a needle on a record player: instead of reading the data off it, it turns that data into dust - and from dust we recover nothing.

The thing about a damaged drive is that every further power-up can make its condition worse. Sometimes there is no second attempt.

What the analysis really is

The analysis is not about trying to get at the data. It is about very deliberate work: how to use equipment that costs serious money to recover the data and, above all, not make the state of the drive any worse. Because even with unlimited time and budget, if something goes wrong there is no second chance.

After the analysis you get four concrete things:

• what is damaged,
• whether the data can be recovered,
• if so - a list of the data we can recover,
• how much it will cost.

At that point you make the decision, before you spend a single zloty on the actual recovery. That is the product of this service - not "having a look at the drive".

What "free diagnosis" really means

Think of it this way: I put hundreds of thousands into equipment, then into the premises, the bills, the updates for those tools, the training. I spend a great deal of time on the diagnosis - and I do the diagnosis for free. So where is the money for all of that supposed to come from?

Picture ten customers coming to you and you serve them all for free. A few of them will drop the recovery for various reasons, and on a few drives the data cannot be recovered at all. Out of the ones who are left, can you cover the premises, the taxes, the electricity, the tools, often a donor drive needed for the analysis, and keep investing in development the whole time? Hmmm.

The only thing that is free in this trade

It's this advice: make backups before you get to know the price list.

And if the drive has already failed - don't power it up again, don't experiment, don't hand it to a friend who "knows his way around". Every attempt can take away the one chance you still have. Bring it to someone who starts with a technical analysis, not with attempts to recover the data.

See how data recovery works at our lab or call: 664 725 410.