As a consultant for a data recovery lab for 7 years, I have heard that question asked much more than any other. Understanding that price and cost are indeed big factors, there are other concerns to take into consideration. First of all, only the data’s owner can accurately put a ‘price’ on his or her data. How valuable would a very small QuickBooks file be? How valuable would that same file be if the entire company relied on that same QuickBooks database to stay in business? Couldn’t family photos also be considered priceless in some cases?
Let’s use a Dr. as an example. While in some cases, such as dentists you can shop around and possibly save some money. With that being said, would I select a dentist that had a dirty office, horrible service and poor reputation, solely because he was the cheapest?
Of course I wouldn’t. Well the same philosophy holds true for choosing the best data recovery service for your needs.
With my experience, I can sum up a few primary concerns for someone who happens to find themselves in the need of hard drive data recovery.
Besides the obvious initial concerns of losing your precious files, there are a host of other issues and concerns that could arise when shopping for data recovery.
In so many instances, the very first question that is asked by the shopper is: “How much does data recovery cost?” Understandably this is a very valid concern, especially in these rough economical times. Just as with any other service or product, the consumer wants to know the costs associated prior to committing. However, something that should be given equal, if not even more consideration is “How much will it cost me if I don’t choose data recovery.” (All data has a dollar worth.)
This is where you may need to use a bit of imagination. So much of our daily lives gets saved to a computer hard drive. “My whole life is on that hard drive!” is often heard. Eventually all of your hard work, whether it is Excel spreadsheets, auto-cad drawings, email contacts or even family photos could be rendered inaccessible and useless due to a hardware or software failure. Unfortunately it’s a fact of digital life.
Undeniably the best way to around this unfortunate situation is to avoid it all together by having a back up of your data files. It seems like such basic advice, but it really does ring true!
Imagine that your boss calls you and asks for the previous quarterly sales figures. There is a HUGE deal that is dependent on those numbers. How can you explain to him/her that you no longer have those files, as your hard drive crashed? It’s certainly not your fault that the hard drive crashed. Right? However you are responsible for not having copies (backups) of the critical data. There is never a good time for a hard drive crash, and most times, the hard drive will not give you a “heads up” that it is failing.
It’s not a matter of “if” the hard drive fails, but rather “when” the hard drive fails. This is not the time to explain to the boss that all hard drives do crash. All that they know is that they need the files now! And that you no longer can provide them!
This is the point where all of the times you’ve heard about having backups will repeatedly echo through your mind.
Now, let’s go back to the original question. “Why is data recovery so expensive?”
In this economy every dollar counts. When compared to loss of business, whether it is a small amount of business or possibly your entire business, the costs for hard drive recovery could be considered a very good bargain.. Cost recovery