Re: Praise for PCWorld !

The message <6qk0ceFcsa8pU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
from "Trust No One®" <dana.scully@xxxxxxxx> contains these words:

Ye*** wrote:
They made a perfect job of restoring full contents of a knackered hard
drive -

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/319548#productInformationSection

So what ? Well it cost just £ 99.00 for the almost full 60gb drive
and 24 hr turnaround.

Most quotes i got were £ 250-350.00

So hats off to 'em, worth remembering next time you are presented
with a duff drive and glum owner.

The link you posted does not make clear whether the £99 figure applies if
the drive has to be worked on in their specialized clean room environment.

I too, noticed the lack of pricing information over the option to use
such specialised 'clean room' data recovery services. That rather
suggests such an option will not be included in the standard charge.

If it does then this is a cracking good deal which I'm afraid would send
Odie (former regular on uk.adverts.computer and now in the data recovery
business) out of business :(

This seems rather unlikely.

I hope OP managed to remove his pr0n and private docs before giving
them the
drive :)

If such data was stored on the drive, the OP wouldn't be able to
anything about it anyway if he has to rely on a 'Data Recovery' service
provided by PC World.

PC World know full well that most cases of 'Lost Data' are due to
trivial FS errors preventing the PC from booting into windows, leaving
the customer unable to access their 'precious data'. 'Data recovery', in
a lot of cases, might require nothing more than a boot from a suitable
'Rescue CD' and a run of chkdsk /r (or the equivilent) to get the PC to
once more boot into windows.

Even when chkdsk 'curls up its toes' the 'unfixable errors' quite often
won't prevent a Knoppix live CD boot from accessing the user data on the
corrupted partition. However, such FS repairs should only be attempted
_after_ running the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics to prove the
drive hasn't got unrepairable bad sectors.

Assuming the 'Data Recovery Team' doesn't skip the hard disk diagnostic
test phase before deciding on whether it is safe to run chkdsk or else
ddrescue it to a new drive before doing so, they stand every chance of
recovering the data at a trivial cost allowing them to make a very
handsome profit from their 99 quid service charge.

When the initial diagnostics suggest impending or actual hard disk
failure, they can then explain to their customer how much more it is
going to cost when the more specialised clean room techniques are going
to be required to recover the user's data.

Whether they still charge the initial 99 quid fee when the customer
realises his data wasn't worth yet another 250 quid plus vat, after all,
and says "No thank you!", is another matter. I can't recall seeing the
phrase "No Fix, No Fee" when I looked at that page describing the new
data recovery service. Knowing PC World, I rather doubt it.

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

.