The majority of the world’s digital data is probably stored on hard drives. These days most of those hard drives are likely to be in cloud servers and they should be continually backed up – but accidents happen. That’s why there are data recovery services in Sacramento CA. The key point is to choose a good one, which is to say a reliable one. Here is a guide to help.
Some of the companies advertising data recovery services in Sacramento CA are actually companies that store your data safely so that it can be recovered any time it is needed. These companies will typically offer one or both cloud data storage and offline storage. Some of these companies may also be able to recover data from hard drives, but this is a completely different service, so you’d need to check.
1. Make sure you clarify any special requirements
Although all hard drives may look pretty similar on the outside, there are huge differences between them on the inside. In particular, solid-state (SSD) drives and Mac hard drives (which may also be SSD drives) need very different treatment from standard hard disk drives. If you need data recovered from either of those, it’s a good idea to check specifically that a data recovery service has experience handling them. This can save you the frustration of having a disk returned because the data recovery service doesn’t know what to do with it (or the even worse frustration of them trying to recover data and actually making the problem worse).
2. Confirm that the data recovery service has a data recovery lab in Sacramento CA
Data recovery labs are hard to staff and expensive to set up and maintain. This means that even the biggest data recovery services are only likely to have a small number of actual labs. If you see a company advertising multiple data recovery centers, you can probably take it as read that the vast majority of these are actually customer-service points.
They may (or may not) run some initial diagnostic tests on your hard disk and they may (or may not) be able to undertake some basic recovery work but if they are, that will be it. Basically, at most, they’ll do what a reasonably IT-competent person could have done themselves with off-the-shelf software. If that doesn’t work, they’ll send the hard drive to a proper data recovery lab, you want to know where that lab is located.
The key point to note is that the further your hard drive has to travel, the more vulnerable it is to damage and theft. What’s more, your contract of service probably says that any dispute would be handled under the law and by the courts of the data recovery services’ main business location, which could be very inconvenient for you.
3. Check that their lab meets all relevant standards
In addition to meeting high standards of security, both physical and network, data recovery labs have to be run to a very high standard of hygiene. As a minimum, they should be certified to ISO 5 Cleanroom standards (some are even certified to ISO 4 Cleanroom). This is hugely important as the minutest speck of dust on the inside of a hard drive could damage it beyond all repair, literally. This need for absolute cleanliness is one of the reasons why it is so expensive to set up and maintain data recovery labs (the need to recruit and retain staff is another).
4. Clarify the process they will use
What you would like to hear is that the company will provide you with a free, no-obligation diagnosis and a quote of what they will charge if they can recover your data. While it is entirely common for data recovery services to offer different fees depending on the speed of service, they should only charge you anything if they can recover your data to the extent they say they can.
This last point is hugely important not just from the perspective of limiting your potential financial liability, but also from the perspective of encouraging data recovery services to admit when a problem is beyond their capabilities. In data recovery, your first shot is almost always your best shot, which means you don’t want to waste it. This is one situation where you don’t want someone to “have a go” and see if they get lucky, not even if they do it at their own financial risk.
Last but by no means least, you want to clarify how they will return your data to you and check that they will keep a copy of it until you have confirmed safe receipt.
If you’d like to speak to a reliable data recovery services in Sacramento CA, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.
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