Data recovery is necessary in virtually every business with more than a handful of computers, as all hard drives eventually fail and even the best redundancy systems can’t protect a company from user error. While data recovery is typically expensive and time consuming, it’s often better than never seeing an important database or spreadsheet again, so many companies use data recovery services on a regular basis. If your company is looking into data recovery services, here are a few tips to make sure you get the best deal possible without sacrificing quality of service.
1. Speed of all service levels – If your business is looking at data recovery, there’s a good chance that at some point or another, you’ll need every service level that the company offers, including emergency services, expedited services, and slow services intended to keep costs down. Find out the average turnaround times that a company offers and the relative prices for each average case. Contact a few data recovery companies to see how the prices compare. Discuss non-hard drive data recovery services offered, such as RAID array data recovery and flash media data recovery.
2. Flat rate vs. evaluated pricing – Since every hard drive is different, and every hard drive failure is different, most data recovery companies insist on doing an evaluation of a case before quoting a price or attempting recovery. However, given the sheer volume that some businesses can offer a data recovery company, occasionally a flat rate pricing structure can be negotiated. If your company is offered flat rate pricing, be sure to counteroffer rather than taking the first per drive offer, but eventually you’ll probably want to take the flat rate pricing, as it’s often at a heavy discount to the average cost of data recovery.
3. Technology. Any data recovery company that your business contacts should have a thorough knowledge of clean rooms, firmware repair tools, and every major operating system. Ask to speak to an engineer, and get your IT specialist on the line to discuss their data recovery methods. Ask for a list of the company’s major clients, so that you can check them out to ensure a high rate of recoverable hard drives, and ask for any literature that the company may have prepared detailing their process. Make sure that the data recovery company in question has a no data no charge policy, so that your company doesn’t have to pay if data is not recovered in a certain case.
Has your business used data recovery services? Post your thoughts in our comments section below.
