Lagom
Member since Dec 2014
R3 Data Recovery
Sheffield | Data Recovery
02 Dec 2014
Excellent, trustworthy company
5
Like many, no doubt, I was devastated when my external hard drive failed, and I was also extremely apprehensive when researching data recovery companies. There seem to be a lot of charlatans in this field and some very dubious practices that verge on fraud, in my opinion. My initial approaches to several companies only reinforced this. Clearly, there were some with very good/aggressive sales and marketing, but little substance behind that.
However, an email to ask for a quote and some research on R3 left me feeling better. Other companies offered me an unrealistically low price "subject to confirmation" and little idea of what might be wrong. My suspicions are that that price would increase exponentially once they had my hard drive in their possession and that the problem would suddenly become very "difficult" to solve - a view borne out by some research. R3, on the other hand, were up front about their costs, and were able to give me a logical reason for my hard disk's failure, which at least sounded plausible with my slightly above average knowledge of hardware mechanics. Furthermore, they were honest about the fact that they weren't necessarily going to be the cheapest in the market, but that the price was fixed as long as the problem was as predicted.
Having bitten the bullet and sent my hard disk to them (UPS courier included in the price), they quickly got back to me with a list of recovered files. They provide these in a format that requires their own proprietry software if you're going to get the fullest results. Unfortunately, this does not yet support Windows 8 - my only small complaint - but it is possible to read their file with any common csv reader, such as Excel or Open Office. That at least gave me enough information to know that they had actually found and recovered the required files (some other companies have been known to return just file names, with no content and charge for full recovery!). Upon payment, these files were then returned to me on a new hard drive and are exactly as when I lost them. It's worth mentioning that they also recovered a second partition, which had been hidden at the time of failure, although this didn't show up immediately on their software, and I had to point them to it. Nonetheless, once done, that was recovered in full too.
On a couple of occasions, I needed to contact the company, and twice I had an answer back as late as 11pm, which is fantastic customer service. And it wasn't just a holding answer, either. Clearly, they had taken the trouble to get the full answer at that time.
I was extremely nervous about the whole process of using a data recovery company - there are a lot of bitter people out there, who have been ripped off in many ways. However, I am completely satisfied with the support given by R3, who have been excellent throughout. They might not be the cheapest quote, but I would recommend them without hesitation for the servie and peace of mind that comes with dealing with a professional company.
However, an email to ask for a quote and some research on R3 left me feeling better. Other companies offered me an unrealistically low price "subject to confirmation" and little idea of what might be wrong. My suspicions are that that price would increase exponentially once they had my hard drive in their possession and that the problem would suddenly become very "difficult" to solve - a view borne out by some research. R3, on the other hand, were up front about their costs, and were able to give me a logical reason for my hard disk's failure, which at least sounded plausible with my slightly above average knowledge of hardware mechanics. Furthermore, they were honest about the fact that they weren't necessarily going to be the cheapest in the market, but that the price was fixed as long as the problem was as predicted.
Having bitten the bullet and sent my hard disk to them (UPS courier included in the price), they quickly got back to me with a list of recovered files. They provide these in a format that requires their own proprietry software if you're going to get the fullest results. Unfortunately, this does not yet support Windows 8 - my only small complaint - but it is possible to read their file with any common csv reader, such as Excel or Open Office. That at least gave me enough information to know that they had actually found and recovered the required files (some other companies have been known to return just file names, with no content and charge for full recovery!). Upon payment, these files were then returned to me on a new hard drive and are exactly as when I lost them. It's worth mentioning that they also recovered a second partition, which had been hidden at the time of failure, although this didn't show up immediately on their software, and I had to point them to it. Nonetheless, once done, that was recovered in full too.
On a couple of occasions, I needed to contact the company, and twice I had an answer back as late as 11pm, which is fantastic customer service. And it wasn't just a holding answer, either. Clearly, they had taken the trouble to get the full answer at that time.
I was extremely nervous about the whole process of using a data recovery company - there are a lot of bitter people out there, who have been ripped off in many ways. However, I am completely satisfied with the support given by R3, who have been excellent throughout. They might not be the cheapest quote, but I would recommend them without hesitation for the servie and peace of mind that comes with dealing with a professional company.