Oh man, I totally feel your pain—data loss sucks big time. I’ve been there, done that, so here’s my experience with Secure Data Recovery.
About six months ago, my external hard drive took a dive for the worse. I had family photos, work documents, the whole shebang on there. I reached out to Secure Data Recovery after seeing mixed reviews online but decided to give them a shot anyway because I was desperate and they seemed like one of the more reputable companies out there.
First off, their customer service was on point. They were super responsive and informative. I called 'em up, and within 24 hours, they sent me a prepaid shipping label. I packed up my busted drive and sent it off. Pretty seamless process there.
Once they received it, they did an initial evaluation and diagnostics for free. It took about 24-48 hours to get the results. They then sent me a detailed report on what was recoverable and quoted a price. Okay, this part was a little sticker shock for sure. Data recovery is not cheap, but considering what was at stake, I figured it was worth it.
Fast forward a bit, and they managed to recover about 95% of my data. Not perfect, but way better than losing everything. They FedEx’d me the recovered data on a new external hard drive. So yeah, overall, they did a pretty solid job. The only downside for me was the price. But hey, you get what you pay for, right?
Now, if you’re looking for alternatives or maybe another layer of security, I started using Disk Drill
after that whole ordeal. It’s a data recovery software that works pretty well for those less catastrophic data loss situations. You can find it here: https://www.disk-drill.com/. I like having it as a backup solution for smaller screw-ups.
In short, if you’ve got valuable stuff on that hard drive, Secure Data Recovery is a good option despite the cost. Just weigh that price against what your data’s worth and take it from there.