When should I pay for professional data recovery?

Pay for professional recovery when the data is worth more to you than the bill and the simple checks have failed: family photos, tax and legal records, business files or work with no other copy. Do not pay for files you can re-download, re-create or find in a backup. And pay for it before you try anything risky at home, because the home attempts are what turn a recoverable drive into a lost one.

The decision in three questions

Can you get the data another way? Check cloud accounts, email attachments, your phone, other computers and any old backup disk first. Windows Backup can sync your Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders to OneDrive, and "Your free Microsoft account comes with 5 GB of OneDrive cloud storage".^[3] A free copy you forgot about beats any lab.

What would it cost you to lose it? Be honest. A drive of old downloads is not worth a lab bill. A drive with a child's first years on it, a thesis or a small business's books is.

Did the simple checks fail? A different cable, port or computer fixes a surprising number of "dead" drives. If another cable, port and machine all fail to see the drive, or the drive makes noise, you are past the simple checks.

Signs it is a lab job

• Clicking, grinding, beeping or repeated spin-up and stop. These point to a mechanical fault. Power it off. More running time risks more damage.
• Not detected at all by any computer, after you have tried a second cable and machine.
• Water, fire or drop damage. Do not power it on to test it.
• A repair tool failed. Apple notes: "Disk Utility can’t detect or repair all problems that a disk may have."^[1] For a disk that cannot be repaired, it says "it may be physically damaged and need to be replaced."^[1]
• A solid-state drive, encrypted drive or RAID set that will not mount. These are poor candidates for home attempts.

When not to pay yet

If the drive still appears and opens, copy your files out first. If the drive shows up but wants to be formatted, say no: Apple's last step for a Mac disk it cannot repair is to "back up as much of your data as possible, reformat the disk, reinstall macOS, then restore your backed-up data."^[1] Reformatting erases what is there, so copy first.

If the drive is old and the data is low-value, accept the loss. The same goes for software "recovery" of deleted files from a drive that works: that is a cheap home job, not a lab one, and files that have since been overwritten may not be recoverable by anyone.

Choosing a recovery business in Virginia

Ask for a written evaluation with the likely result, the price for that result, the terms if nothing is recovered, a file list before you pay and the return media. Ask what they do with your drive afterward. Be wary of any shop that states a firm price or a success rate before it has looked at the drive. Virginia's Consumer Protection Act lists as a prohibited practice: "Misrepresenting that goods or services have certain quantities, characteristics, ingredients, uses, or benefits".^[2] Keep every quote and email.

For the price drivers and a checklist for the quote, see how much data recovery costs in Virginia. For what is realistic with a failed drive, read can data be recovered from a dead hard drive.

Stop and call a pro if

• The drive clicks, grinds or beeps. Stop and leave it off.
• Anything on it is irreplaceable and you have no other copy.
• You are about to run repair software, a "free recovery" download or a reformat on the only copy.
• A seller wants full payment up front, or will not say what happens if nothing is recovered.

Getting help in Virginia

Loclis lists local repair businesses. Browse small repairs, more electronics repair answers, or describe the dead drive and local shops can quote an evaluation.