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Data Recovery
Computer Fix It has over 22 years experience in the Computer Industry. We perform hard drive repair and data recovery here in Wichita. No matter how bad it is, we can fix about 90% of all hard drives we see. We have come along way since computers cost $2500 each. Customers inexpensive computer hardware might deceive customers into failing to take proper precautions with their data and backups. They often ask me why is it so expensive to recover data? Users often have huge investments in music, videos and ebooks purchased or family photos which might be irreplaceable. Small businesses might have customer contact information, accounting information and other proprietary information for thier business. This information should always be backed up in a safe place.
While data recovery might be an option, it is not an inexpensive option. Small Business Administration says that a small business that has a catastrophic lost of data has a 66% chance of failing business and/or going bankrupt within 24 months due to the cost and distraction of loosing those assets. So it is wise to spend a little time thinking about your home or business disaster recovery plan before data recovery is required. Whatever your situation we hope you will call Computer Fix IT to help you out
Data Backup
To avoid high costs of data recovery you need a backup. You should have a backup before any computer service or repair is performed. It is always the data owners responsibility to have a backup of their data. Data backup and/or resulting data recovery are the responsibility of the computer/data owner. If you do not have a good backup of your data you should always bring your computer to Computer Fix It and be sure to request a backup of your data before any computer repair. Everyone is responsible for their own data and backups and resulting data recovery. Good news is that a good home backup system can be as simple as a $199 network attached storage or $459 for a little more industrial strength network attached storage box with a couple of hard drives mirrored in a raid mirror for double safety.
Warning! Do not use the popular USB flash drive, USB pen drive nor even the USB hard drives for a backup system. They can be easily erased, damaged or rendered useless. They are frequently lost or stolen for which their is no data recovery. In this same vein never leave your important data on a laptop. Your laptop leaves the house, sits in the car, gets used at Starbucks or the University and any number of loss opportunities could occur in which data recovery will not help.
Businesses with company data should spend a bit more and ensure that they have a heavy duty industrial strength backup system and that their network admin takes one more step and performs a monthly test restore to ensure that they are backing up what they think they are. It is very disappointing to businesses who thought they did everything right only to find out that the backup stopped working last November but kept going through the appearance of doing backups as usual. Now what? Data recovery. You are stuck with nothing but to find a data recovery specialist at $300 or more.
Data Recovery
Now that you found you have a failed hard drive and the backup didn't work. You thought you were making a backup but it does not appear to have backed up important files for the last 9 months. This situation calls for data recovery. The data you have is absolutely necessary to the happy continuation of your life with pictures of your wedding or mom's will or grandpas enlistment papers you were saving for sentimental reasons. Computer Fix It performs data recovery in Wichita. Or you are a business that needs to substantiate your taxes, requires your customer lists and history of work performed for or products purchased by your customers over the years. Your payroll tax information is also embedded on that hard drive. In these cases Data recovery becomes a reasonable choice.
These are the typical scenarios that play out several times a day in Wichita. The first level of data recovery is to see if the drive is actually dead. If you have what you feel is a failure turn off the machine immediately do not let anyone mess with it as they will likely make it worse and bring it to Computer Fix It right away for a data recovery analysis. I cannot stress this enough do not let anyone mess with the machine or get you into worse trouble. Even leaving the machine turned on often does more damage so turn it off, unplug it, whatever you have to power it down. Leave it off until you know what you are doing to do. Often minutes count in making a bad situation worse. I have seen it many, many times where the data was easily recoverable but the client,friend of clients or employee damaged the data doing things which prevented our virtual data recovery attempt.
We will test the drive to see if it is indeed failed or by some magic it was some other component on the computer saving you the data recovery cost. Then if it is the hard drive we will see if it is a virtual failure which can be repaired by specialized data recovery software that we own. This software costs several thousands of dollars. At this point we are still not in too much trouble as the time to recover the data may not yet be significant nor costly. So if you ever feel you have a data lose situation STOP, shut off the computer and call Computer Fix IT the data recovery specialist in Wichita. We do our own data recovery right here in Wichita so the times and costs are significantly less than working with someone else who sends their hard drive out of town to be worked on.
Hard Drive Repair
This is where it can get a little tricky and it can be very time consuming and expensive in a hurry. I often have people ask why is it so expensive to perform data recovery on my files? Well read on. At this point the average person is not going to pay extensive data recovery costs to recover their sisters wedding photos which could be $500 let alone $1000 or $1500.
What is required for data recovery? What is required is a hard drive diagnostic which began with our virtual tests but continues as we narrow down the failure component from PCB, head, platter, arm , motor, bracket or other part. Data recovery can be time consuming even before we begin the data recovery repair. We have to source the exact same drive to get the exact same part and firm wear. Not only the exact same 3, 5 or 7 year old model Western Digital 320 GB double platter 7200 RPM sataII drive but we also have to find the exact same bios/cmos. The mfgrs bios change in as little as 10 days time so we have to find not only the same model drive from the same factory (Many popular drives are manufactured by 3-5 different factories during their peak demand in 3 to 5 separate countries from Asia to Pakistan). But for a successful data recovery we have to find that exact drive which was manufactured at the same place and within the same time period and with an identical firm-wear. Also the dates sometimes have to be within 10 days but this drive is 7 years old. How ever will anyone find that needle in a haystack? Well now you begin to understand that data recovery is and can be very time consuming and very expensive. So best not to lose your data in the first place. But if you do, and you do not have a backup, be prepared.
Knowing what pains we must go through for you, I know of no professional data recovery expert who will have much sympathy or heed your pleads for a discount on a full fledged hardware data recovery on a 3+ year old hard drive.
Ok I am not trying to sound like a hard nose but I hope by giving you the straight facts about data recovery you will pay heed to have the proper backup protection policies of all your data and never require this particular service.
But please remember that Computer Fix It is hear when and if you need us.