Kotar Data Recovery

This man deserves your business. Robert Kotar is a wizard expert at data recovery who is as honorable, honest and diligent as they come, and he makes every effort to keep the cost at a competitive and reasonable level. I had a failing SSD disk that I needed to clone to a new SSD, but it had bad sectors which aborted the cloning process with every commercial program I used. I must have spent nearly 10 hours of frustration on, but when I left it with Robert it took him less than an hour to clone and he refused to take my money for it as he said it was quick and easy. Wow! Go out of your way to give Robert your data recovery jobs; you will not be disappointed.

This place is amazing! I am a professional photographer, and I had an engagement shoot a few weeks ago. I took my equipment home, and then when I go to download the pictures onto my computer, it said there were no photos on my memory card… EVERY PHOTOGRAPHER’S ABSOLUTE WORST NIGHTMARE! So of course I panic, and then start researching ways to recover data. I find Kotar Data Recovery on Unilocal,and it had tons of great reviews (good sign) and so I went in with my memory card! They gave me a quote that day, and they had it done the next day!!! This was the week of Christmas, btw, and they still got it done for me. I can’t say enough good things about this place, they saved my butt, and they were quick. The price is a little steep, but honestly, it’s worth it to me. THANK YOU KOTAR!

Kotar Data Recovery ROCKS !!! I’ve used their service twice in two years and they’ve been wonderful !! — First time I had a SONY laptop that died; they were able to retrieve all the information off the hard drive. A year later, I cleaned out a storage unit and found an old, old, CPU tower from a old computer; again, they were able to retrieve all the information. Getting all my family pictures back !! — priceless !!! They are friendly, professional, honest and easy to work with. Thank you, Thank you, Robert !!!

I just had Robert help me with my second computer disk problem. The first time seemed impossible with an array of 5 disks that had been hopelessly jumbled. He was able to achieve 100% restoration of several terabytes of data in just a few days. This time I had just a single disk that was severely corrupted. He could not get a full restoration — but was able to search for specific files and get what I needed. After picking up my data and paying, I found that he had gotten the wrong files, He went back and was able to find the correct files over the weekend and did not charge any extra. He in not cheap — but very worth the fees he charges. I would not trust anyone else!

I had a SSD (solid state drive) that died with a weeks worth of work, and a client waiting for my project. The drive wouldn’t show up on my computer. I messed around with it till the pc finally saw the drive, but the size was zero kb. But I Needed that DATA!
So I searched for local recovery centers and finally found Kotar. I called, and Robert said he would get right on the recovery. So I took the drive to Robert and dropped it off.
It turned out that the main CPU had died, plus there was encryption on the memory chips. So Robert pulled the chips, downloaded all the data from the memory chips, then spent many hours to decrypt the chips. After a lot of effort (including working on weekends) he finally succeeded in recovering ALL of my Data! It was not cheap, but not way expensive like some of the other companies. And, they are local. I really liked that.
I now have a loaner SSD from Robert with all of my files in perfect condition.
I am very impressed by Robert’s efforts, knowledge and communications. He was very responsive and friendly to work with too.
I can’t recommend Kotar enough. If they can solve my problem, they can probably solve yours. Thanks Robert!
I set up a backup schedule so if i ever have another disk crash, i will have a backup. However, if something like this ever happens again, i will definitely call Kotar.

I had an almost three-​year-​old RAID 0 drive that would unmount more and more and finally would not mount at all.
I brought the drive in and Robert was able to recover the data and loan me a drive to place the data onto a new Drobo, set as a RAID 6, with two drives backup, and also onto a separate drive.
Lesson learned: Back up everything and back it up somewhere else too, you fool!
In closing, Robert did an awesome job but, and I am sure he has heard this before, I hope I never have to use his services again.
So, you use his services when you have that dreaded catastrophic drive failure and know that all is not lost.
Back up everything right now! Because when that drive goes down, it will be without warning. When it does, rest assured that if the data can be recovered, Robert can do it.

Robert is just great, what can I say, took my hard drive in, he showed me what to do, in less than 30 minutes I was out of there and could you believe this — no charge — who ever does that anymore
thanks robert, a very honest man, I will send biz your way for sure
thanks george

We weren’t in a desperate situation as probably most people using this service as I was able to get 95% of the data of my corrupted drive (in form of a cloud backup). To try to get the last 5%, I took my drive here. The gentleman was very friendly and clear about the process. The free evaluation was also a big plus. The quote came back at $ 640. Now, I have no idea if that’s a fair price for data recovery, and if we would have lost everything we probably would have paid any price. But, at the same time, it seemed like a lot of money for not only our situation, but just for the work involved, so that’s why I’m only giving 4 stars. I would definitely look at this business again if my situation was more dire.

I had an external hard drive (platter) suddenly fail on me and needed it repaired. The drive had irreplaceable video footage on it and I would have been in a world of hurt if the data was lost. After seeing the positive reviews on Unilocal,I brought my drive to the Kotar Data Recovery team. Robert quickly diagnosed what my problem was and contacted me later that day with a quote and an estimated timeline for recovery. Despite the damage being worse than expected, Robert and his team were able to recover all of the data from my drive. They kept me apprised of their progress regularly via text message and gave me a loner drive to transfer data off of after the recovery was complete.
I would highly recommend you back up your important data in multiple places to make sure this type of situation never happens to you. However, if it does: call Kotar Data Recovery.

Robert is a gentleman and very skilled at what he does. Unfortunately, not all data is recoverable, it is the nature of the technology. With valiant attempts, no data other than scraps of operating system files were recovered, no documents or otherwise of note. Still cost over $ 1,500. You may wish to inquire before authorizing work.

Kotar Data Recovery saved us from an embarrassing business disaster. We had our critical files on a memory stick and didn’t realize we hadn’t backed them up. One morning, our PC said it didn’t recognize the memory stick. We took the stick to Robert Kotar that day. Even though the stick was no longer operable, he extracted the data, decrypted it, and got all of our data back to us before our deadline. Awesome!

Kotar Data Recovery team did an excellent job in saving my data.
I came in there on March 10, 2015 and the next day I was told they have my data! I called one of their other competitors and they wanted to charge me a lot more.
Thank you so much Kotar!

Chose Kotar to try and recover my crashed hard drive based on the positive feedback here on Unilocal.Brought my drive in and within a couple hours Robert had examined my drive and contacted me. Unfortunately my drive was in bad shape and it would take a lot of work, and money, to try and restore the data. It was only a few months of pictures and videos so I decided against moving forward with the data restore.
I still felt compelled to give Kotar five stars. Robert was very patient and honest and I believe he is someone you can trust. He charged me nothing for taking a look at the drive and he didn’t try and reduce the price when I said it was too high considering the data wasn’t that important. If he did offer to reduce the price I would think he was trying to overcharge me. These days it is very hard to find an honest business. It is refreshing to deal with someone like Robert.

I had 10 years of pictures saved ONLY on an external hard drive (valuable lesson here btw) that failed and was damaged, and after other attempts to recover, I had given up all hope. On a fluke I went by Kotar Data Recovery as they are local to my office and walked in and talked to Robert. He was very upfront, professional and didn’t over promise, but I left the drive with him with cautious optimism.
In less than a week, he so over-​delivered that I am still speechless! at least 90% of the photos and videos were recovered and if I wanted, I could probably go back and have him work on the rest!
…It was just an outstanding experience, and for the services rendered, it was worth TWICE what he charged me! I recommend Kotar (and Robert) without hesitation!

I came to Kotar after having talked to my company’s IT department and they claimed they did a last resort couple of options on my person hard drive. I think that in reality if I had come to Kotar 1^st, there might have been less damage to my hard drive, but lessons learned…
I found Kotar on Unilocal and wanted to see what my options were since this was my personal drive that contained all of my pictures for ten years. These aren’t things that can be replaced. I took my hard drive in person (I live nearby) and received a text that day with the estimate. Yes, it was very expensive, but its hard to put a price on old memories (in picture form). I said yes.
In the end, I got my hard drive back with 90+% recovered, so whatever magic he had to work was worth it, even if the price seemed like a lot.
I would remove a half a star as this took a long time, over 3 months to get my hard drive back and additionally, I was the one that would reach out (via text) each week in the final month+ to find out the status of things.

Robert (Mr. Kotar himself) is a true professional and his expertise is impressive. He was very patient working with us, and when the first attempt only produced partial recovery he went back for a second try and got EVERYTHING — no extra charge. This was despite three heads crashing into the platters. The «no data, no pay» guarantee is a sign that he’s the real deal. I have a very old drive that crashed HARD years ago (it made awful noises, and Kroll Ontrack could not recover the data) that I’m tempted to bring to him — if anybody can fix it, it’s Kotar.
Can’t recommend highly enough. Data recovery is never cheap but Robert’s prices are very, very competitive — probably more than the cheapest guys out there, but if you’re desperate enough to go for data recovery, do you really want the cheapest? Definitely more reasonable than some of the big players.

Kotar Data Recovery saved our most precious memories.
My wife has most of the collection of photos and videos of our two boys in an external drive. This drive was suddenly damaged and we had no backup. We tried multiple ways to access the drive. even my IT department at work could not get through it. But Kotar Data Recovery did.
Robert was most generous, friendly and efficient in saving our data. So I learned my lesson: back up your data… or give a call to Kotar Data Recovery.
Thanks Robert!

For an unknown reason, my SD card lost half of my photos from an event I covered. After reading the amazing reviews Kotar have here on Unilocal,I brought in my memory card for them to check. They gave me a free quote and when I agreed for them to do the job, they retrieved my files within an hour. Fast turnaround and reasonably priced! Highly recommended!

Kotar himself will give a free estimate on your drive, and will patiently put up with your questions about details. He has a lot of experience and his location is easily accessible from anywhere in the local area. Fast turnaround on estimates, no pressure to accept the offer; no hard sell.
In my case, I elected not to go ahead with the repair. My drive had very serious damage so it was very expensive. However, I appreciated the professionalism every step of the way and the straightforward business dealings.
A lot of recovery companies will be very pushy and intimidating in what is already a very stressful situation. I appreciated the fact that this was not the case here.

This place is the best! My external died on me a week before a huge editing project was due. Data recovery is expensive, but if you’re in a pinch you don’t really have any other option. My drive was in really bad shape, but $ 800 dollars later everything was recovered. I was able to relink all the project files without a problem and didn’t suffer any loss in image quality.
I highly recommend Kotar Data Recovery!