Somebody trying to sell me software says I can recover my own data for $60, so there’s no need to pay you, right?
Recovering data yourself using off-the-shelf software tools comes with risks. Unless you have configured write-blocking software and hardware, when you connect your drive to your computer or when you leave your phone running, it will inevitably change some of the data on the device, making recovery less likely. If the drive has physical damage, it can also increase that damage and destroy data. Before working on any recovery process, we make an image of the device so that we have a working copy instead of risking using a live drive. That being said, yes, you can recover it yourself if you’re willing to take some risk. If you would regret accidentally destroying your data, leave it to a professional.
Do I need a clean room to recover my data?
Probably not. Clean rooms are only needed in case of physical damage to drives, which most recoveries don’t involve. Firmware issues and filesystem corruption are much more likely culprits. Many data recovery providers charge the “clean room” prices regardless of whether a clean room was used or not. Just because your neighborhood computer shop can’t figure out how to recover the data from your hard drive and says you need a clean room doesn’t mean you do.
Does putting a hard drive in the freezer work?
No, nor will any other such attempts at wizardry. This myth comes from many years ago when hard drives were designed differently, and even then, it worked rarely. Putting your hard drive in the freezer will create condensation inside the drive, practically guaranteeing the data is unrecoverable without spending thousands of dollars and greatly increasing the chance that it becomes totally unrecoverable. Use your freezer for food, not drives.
Somebody else said the data is unrecoverable, is this true?
Probably not, especially if they are not a data recovery provider. Many computer repair and other IT shops offer “data recovery” which is more accurately labeled “data transfer and fixing minor errors”. Data recovery is a separate field unto itself and requires years of experience to begin to master. Professional data recovery also involves expensive software and hardware that your local IT shop doesn’t have access to. If a true data recovery provider said your data is unrecoverable, they’re probably right, but it never hurts to get a second opinion.
Can you “un-delete” files? What if I accidentally formatted my hard drive?
Yes! These are some of the most common data recovery requests we receive. Files can be un-deleted and drives which were formatted can have the data retrieved from them.
Can you recover data from flash drives? USB storage devices? iPods? Zip disks? Clay tablets?
Whether it’s something everybody has or an obscure storage format going back decades, we can recover it! If it’s super-obscure, we may have to order something special to read the data from the device, but we generally stock all the hardware we need to recover from floppy disks and everything that came after them.