Data Retrieval

Data Retrieval has helped me a few times. With my personal laptop, after it crashed while I was doing a work presentation, with my external hard drive full of songs (and memories!) and… my work computer.
No, not the one I use for work, The one that my job owns that I am supposed to return! The ones that I am not supposed to be using for downloading games or music (oops!), that may contain data destroying viruses. Yeah, that computer. It was worth every penny. All the files were retrieved, the charge was fair, and the bosses don’t know, I was slacking off during work hours. (I hope they’re not on Unilocal!).

If you ignore the steep prices, this place’s service is actually good. I brought my hard drive to a few places but they weren’t convincing enough and the funny thing about them is the incoherent explanation they have regarding their service. But with Data Retrieval, explanations were in full detail and coherent.
They told me it would take a couple of days to check the hard drive and restore the original files. So when I finally got the thing restored, all of my waiting and patience were rewarded. They did a great job. Everyone was very professional. It’s expensive but it was worth it.

Words of wisdom: If you don’t know a lot about computers, make sure you have friends who do!
So, my hard drive wasn’t working one morning and I just couldn’t figure it out. A call to Dell customer service told me that my hard drive was not being recognized by my computer anymore. Dell promptly came over and gave me a new drive. Problem was I had a lot of important files on my old hard drive. The technician gave me 10 days to try and get back my data.
Scouring the internet, I found Data retrieval and decided to give them a try. I’m not the most computer savvy, so I was hoping they would be able to help me without much headache.
When I got there, I found out for a free diagnostic plan, it would take almost 3 – 4 weeks to get my drive back if successful, not good for me and my 10 day time limit. So I chose to $ 99 diagnostic plan which was 3 – 4 days, much better. I left my drive with them hoping for good news.
So I get a call from one of their salesmen the next day telling me that they had found the «problem» with my hard drive. It was a mechanical failure and they would have to replace the parts that were broken. The price he quoted me at the time was over $ 1300 dollars. I was like wow, it costs that much?
Anyways, after the call, I consulted a friend (which in hindsight, I really should of done in the first place.) He told me how outrageous that was and that I should try a few tips before going any further. I go down to Data Retrieval to get my drive back. I told them $ 1300 was a bit too much for me. The same salesmen I talked to tells me they happen to be running a promotion and the price was now $ 800. (Where was this promotion yesterday?) He goes on to tell me if I take the drive back now, i will never get my data back as once it leaves their hands, there’s no going back. He begins to tell me they will 100% get my data back (which is up from the 90% rate he told me the day before. He was practically telling me anything to get me to not take my drive back. At this point, I knew it was fishy, whether I knew anything about computers or not. In the end, I took my drive back intent on trying some of the tips my friend told me about.
Got home, plugged the drive into another socket and loaded it as a separate slave drive. Lo and Behold, it works completely fine! I’m saving the files from the old drive to the new drive as we speak! There was absolutely no mechanical failure whatsoever. At this point, I’m thinking it was just the some corruption with the boot files. Can you believe that? They were going to try and charge me $ 1300 for nothing!!! They lied about the mechanical failure as well. They probably take advantage of anyone with little knowledge about computers. I felt really mad honestly. I’m so glad I had that talk with my friend before I lost my hard earned money.
It’s pathetic honestly. Any company that tries to take advantage of people shouldn’t be allowed to keep running. It’s a sad sad world we live in sometimes. I got lucky this time, but I wonder how many victims have been duped by companies like this in the past. In the end, yes it could be my fault for not knowing enough about computers myself. I doesn’t give them the right to just try and literally steal my money.
So like I said, if you’re not the most computer savvy, make sure you know someone who is!!! It could really save you some day! I wish 0 out of 5 was an option here as I don’t believe they should even get a 1 being so dishonest. Beware!