After your hard drive is brought in or shipped to my data recovery service, the data recovery estimate will be completed in 2-3 business days or less. There is a minimum recovery charge of $150.00 * for recovering all data on hard drives up to 80GB. For larger drives see Fee Schedule. Recovered data will be copied to a regular or USB hard drive. For returning your data, a hard drive is required. It can be supplied by the customer or purchased from my service. I offer 500GB USB laptop size hard drives for around $100.00* or a 1TB USB laptop size hard drive for $130.00* Note: Due to the current hard drive shortage, prices have increased. Call for current prices.

Payment will be due at completion of recovery.

*Plus shipping & handling fees.

 Specializing in Macintosh & Windows Data Recovery

Payment Options - Credit Card, Cash,* Checks*, PayPal

Visa, MasterCard, American Express , Discover Card, PayPal  

* Cash & Checks accepted for local customers only.*
    
              
                   
 
After diagnosing the hard drive, an initial estimate will be given to recover all data including lost files, folders, pictures etc.

To view the fee schedule just cliick this link  Fee Schedule    or call or email me to request one. 

Recovery may be raw file types or folders. This depends on condition of recovered data. If recovery is not possible, there is no charge.

No Recovery - No Fee. 


Password Removal - A password removal service is available for all Fujitsu, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital laptop, desktop and USB hard drives. Call for a price quote!

Levels of Hard Drive Recovery

Level 0 data recovery - This level is commonly know as "restoring". Your data is restored from a backup or copy of your data. The restoration can be done by the user or by a PC repair shop.

Level 1 data recovery - This level is when your hard drive is recognized by the system, but you are unable to access the files you want.  It can be caused by file deletion, reformatted drive, deleted, damaged or corrupt partitions or virus infections, spy-ware etc. A Level 1 recovery means the drive is classified as "healthy" and has no bad sectors.


Level 2 data recovery - This level causes your drive to appear corrupt, inaccessible, blue screen, frequent freezing, intermittant program errors etc. The repair requires specialized imaging equipment to make an image of the failing source drive to a known good target drive. The data is then recovered from the image on the good target drive, and not from the failing source drive. This recovery level means the drive is starting to experience bad sectors. A Level 2 recovery means the drive has some bad sectors.
 
Levels 1 and 2 are classified as   "logical failures". 
 

 I am able to recover your data from all failure Levels 1, 2 , 3 & 4.  A Level 4 recovery includes physical "hardware" & electronic failures.

 
Level 3 data recovery - Typical symptoms for this level could be some clicking sounds or the drive may not be recognized by the computers bios. You may also experience all of the symptoms from a Level 1 & Level 2 failure. The cause could be extensive sector failure or corrupted firmware. This type of failure requires specialized equipment to repair and rewrite the drives internal firmware. It may also require an imager to make an image of the failing source drive to a known good target drive. The data is then extracted from the image and recovered from the target drive. A Level 3 recovery means the hard drive has corrupted firmware problems or has extensive sector damage. A clean room is not required for the level, but specialized equipment is a must to perform this level of recovery.


Level 4 data recovery - This failure is when you hear clicking or other unusual sounds. The platters may not spin or the drive may not be recognized by the computer. The repair requires a clean room to remove the covers and to repair a read write head stuck to a platter and realignment. May also require repairing printed circuit board components. A Level 4 failure requires extensive clean room component repair such as replacing read heads, transplanting platters, spindle motor seizures or removing contaminated foreign materials such as water etc.

Note: Water and Fire damaged hard drives are handled on a case by case basis.
 
Levels 3 and 4 are classified as  "hardware failures".

These types of hard drive repairs require a clean room or specialized equipment, a microscope and SMD rework station to repair the circuit board. 


All level 4 recoveries will be repaired in a Class 100 mini clean room.


                      Types of Hard Drive Failures 

Logical Hard Drive Failure - This type of failure can occur from a temporary power surge or loss, computer viruses, system crashes, deleted partitions, deleted files, corrupted master boot records etc.  The drive is still functional, but the data or drive may be inaccessible. The drive may not be recognized by the computers bios, but could still be just a logical drive failure.
 
This type of failure does not require the hard drive to be opened.The data is recovered using Logical Recovery methods.

Firmware Damage - This type of failure falls between Logical and Mechanical / Physical hard drive failures.
A typical symptom of this type of failure is when your drive to appears to be corrupt, as an incorrect drive size, or displays an incorrect drive model. The repair for this type of failure requires special equipment to rewrite the drive's firmware and to recalibrate and reprogram the drive, so that the files can be safely recovered.

This type of failure does not require the hard drive to be opened, but it does require an exact match of the same model and firmware version. A donor hard drive may be required for the repair, if an exact match of the firmware cannot be located. 

Mechanical / Physical  Hard Drive Failure - This type of failure can be mechanical or electronic in nature. It can be caused by a head crash, motor or electronic component failure or physical damage from moisture, extreme shock etc. The drive does not spin or may not be recognized by the computers bios. This type of failure will require the drive to be repaired in a facility that has a clean room and the ability to repair the drive before any type of recovery can be attempted. 

Hard drives with this type of physical failure will be repaired in a Class 100 mini clean room. Electronic circuit board failures will be repaired under a microscope and SMD rework station.

If a hard drive is sent into my service and the estimate is not approved by the customer, 
the only charge will be the shipping fee to return the drive. See bottom of Shipping Instructions page.



  *******************             New Hardware and Software Service Offering      ****************************

Now accepting PayPal as a new payment option.

New SMD (surface mounted device) Hot Air Rework Station for repairing damaged circuit boards.

Data Compass from Salvation Data a new data recovery tool for extreme recovery cases.      

I now offer a new file repair service to repair most Microsoft Office file types and Adobe PDF's.

Adobe - PDF's,  Microsoft Word - docs, Microsoft Excel - xls, Microsoft Access - mdb, Microsoft Outlook - pst, Microsoft Publisher - files, Power Point - files 

Corrupted file repair service - Starting as low as $99.00 to repair up to 50 files, depending on file size.

HD Doctor Drive Restoration System - New high tech firmware repair solution. 

"State of the Art" Class 100 mini clean room to inspect and repair physical hard drive failures.

Advanced High Tech Specialized Head-Stack Replacement tools

Clean room utilizes HPE Pro Platter Exchangers and other advanced "state of the art" recovery tools.

                                                                     Call now for details  

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Inside view of a typical multi platter hard drive.
Note: Top platter is damaged.