Once you have received your quotation and understand the work required on your hard drive or USB device, the first step is to accept the quotation and terms with your data recovery specialist. A professional company will not change the price once it has been quoted (this is why we take a great deal of time during the inspection, to ensure we get things right).
The next stage in the data recovery process is for them to carry out the remedial works to your device so they can recover your data for you. As data is a very personal thing, it is ultimately down to yourself to know what is on your hard disk drive.
In our experience we generally find that most of our clients do not remember exactly the extent or amount of data they had stored on their hard drive, except for particular items they are looking for, or maybe what they were working on when the drive failed. It has also been compared to in the past as like having your house burgled, you don’t know what is missing until you go to try and find it!
At EADR our policy is to recover as much data as physically possible, and provide a list of this to present to our clients. Whenever possible we do this using an html document for our clients to check through. This html document generally contains the same file structure as the original drive, so clients would be able to check folders as they were saved previously. By this point, we would have randomly checked a number of documents, photographs etc. to ensure that they open fully and correctly.
Not only do we list the recoverable items, we also include the iProblem folder, which are items which have been detected to have had errors. Whilst it does not mean they are deemed unrecoverable, it does allow our clients to ensure that the most important items to them have in fact been recovered correctly.
What does 'no recovery no fee' actually mean?
At this stage it is important to confirm that all the data that is needed is present and correct. If there are particular items of importance missing then we have the ability to go back and perform further checks to see if the data is recoverable. We would continue to do this until our clients are happy or on occasion, if the drive does not yield the data required, then they have the right to exercise our no recovery, no fee scenario.
Once we have gone as far as possible with the device, we transfer the recovered data on to a desired source of media, such as USB 3.0 portable hard drive or USB flash drive for return to the customer by courier/special delivery. We can also send certain amounts of data electronically, which does help when cases are time sensitive.
It is our company policy to encrypt the data for secure return through the courier/postal system, unless specified by the client.