Have you destroyed your hard drive lately? (Part 3)
If you have not read part 2, please go here: http://blog.harryfino.com/?p=120.
ADR was located on 1600 Market St in Philadelphia. The office building was your typical Philadelphia office building, and their office was located on the 38th floor. If you go there without instruction, you may be a little lost. Why so? Because there is no office of American Data Recovery on the 38th floor, but rather a Competitive Computer Solutions. Having trouble finding Competitive Computer Solutions too? That’s because they don’t have an office either. Instead, they have space inside another company’s office, called JuriStaff Legal Staffing.
This seemed a bit sketchy to me, but I proceeded anyway. I dropped my drive off with the receptionist of the other company that promised to deliver my message to the appropriate person. And then I waited… and waited. It’s amazing how time slows down when you’re constantly thinking about something important. Three hours can seem like an eternity and a full 24 hours… unthinkable. And so just about a day later, I received a call that my drive was in the process of being analyzed.
I didn’t mention this before, but ADR requires a $100 deposit upon delivering your drive. It simply ensures that their time is not completely wasted should you choose not to use their services, which you have the chance to do.
Another day passed and I received word that my data was intact and that they were 99% sure they could recover everything. After the initial estimate they’re able to tell me if they need to ship the drive to a special facility for damaged drives. Luckily, my drive was not damaged. The next step was to send me a file list to show me what they’ll be able to recover. I received the list in a nice HTML web app that made it easy to navigate. To my shock, and comfort, everything of importance was on the list. Unbelievable! I might have made the right choice with the specialist.
Right in the moment of all of my joy, I received the quote for how much the total bill was going to be and I had to make a choice: Pay $1000 for all of my important data, or bail and lose my $100 and find a new way to get my data back.
Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
After screaming about the horrible situation I was in, and the horrible situation that anyone would be in if they lost or deleted some important data, I decided that I just need to follow through with this and learn a really expensive lesson.
Just before I sent my confirmation over, I called Dustin and asked for a breakdown of the $1000. After all, if I’m going to pay that much money, I want to know what I’m paying for. Dustin told me that he was not able to provide me with it, that the boss just gives them the quote to pass on. I didn’t think that was an acceptable answer, so I asked to speak to his manager. That is when I met Brett. I explained to Brett that I wasn’t talking to him to complain about anything, but just that I was writing a blog about my experience and that I wanted a breakdown of what I was paying for. Brett immediately replied that he was able to help me and that he would email me what I was looking for.
Thirty minutes later I received a call from Brett. He told me that he reviewed the quote I was given and for the work that was being done it seemed kind of high. He said he’d call me back with a new quote. And that’s exactly what he did… 30% off to be exact. I don’t know if it was that I spoke to a manager, or if it was the fact that I was writing a blog about it, but I was very happy with the 30% off. He said that the $700 isn’t something that breaks down, that it’s just a combined figure of difficulty and time. I was ok with this after 30% off. I immediately sent in my confirmation for them to begin the final process.
Here is a breakdown of what I paid and what I received for my money:
$100 Initial quote — I received great customer service; they were always available and eager to answer the phone. They analyzed my drive and provided me with a file list of everything they could recover.
$600 remaining cost — I received my original drive, a new hard drive containing all of the recovered files from my original drive, and an external USB enclosure to use the new drive. It was shipped to my house via Fedex.
Overall I was extremely happy with the result of this whole experience. Granted, I never want to have to pay $700 and use a specialist again. However, knowing that if I do need a specialist that they’ll be able to follow through on their claim, is very nice. I highly recommend American Data Recovery if you find yourself in a similar situation, sketchy office and all!
In order to safeguard myself from ever having to do this again, I purchased this: Buffalo Technology LinkStation Pro Duo 1.0 TB (2 X 500GB) Network Attached Storage LS-W1.0TGL/R1 (Black). Now everything is back to the way it was before, and I have scheduled backups running onto my new network attached storage device.
This debacle is over.
UPDATE: Brett read the article and wanted to follow up with some information he thought I would find valuable. Again, another instance of how great the customer service of this company is:
Buffalo network attached storage devices use a proprietary Linux operating system that makes data recovery much more proprietary and expensive. While they are handy and really nice, If you were to have a failure on that complex device (which we see all the time) data recover would be between $3000 – $6000. While your backup option is good, I want to have you make sure you check your back ups and make sure the back up data is good. Also, make sure everything you need is being backed up, sometimes important files are skipped when using automatic back ups so simply verify that everything important to you is actually being backed up. Last, back ups are a second copy. Do not delete the data on the original drive unless you have 2 copies of your data elsewhere. If you live by the 2 copy rule, you should never have to use our services again. I hope this helps and thank you for the nice blog.
