A number of my friends have been asking what finally happened with my hard drive disaster. I believe it’s finally over and done with (the comment added yesterday by Mark Tessin’s son1 notwithstanding), though it didn’t turn out exactly has I’d hoped.
By far, the best things to come of this are:
- A huge reinforcement of the importance of backups.
- Finding a local data recovery shop that I trust in case I ever need recovery services in the future.
As I mentioned previously, I took my drives to a third data recovery place once I got them back from Reynolds2: DataTech Labs. These guys were as good as everone else had been bad. DataTech Labs is highly recommended.
I was actually contacted by Jeff from DataTech Labs after he read about the experience I was having. Jeff impressed me with timely follow-up and even tried to call Reynolds himself (of course, he couldn’t get through either) to help me get my drives back. Once I did get my drives back I decided to take them to DataTech Labs, largely because of my interaction with Jeff.
After dropping my drives off at DataTech Labs, I received a call with a status update later that day, the next day, the day after – they were definitely the 
anti-Reynolds 
. Unfortunately, as their work progressed the news they were bringing me because less optimistic.
By the time the drives got to them, the drives were no longer in the “just pulled from my machine” condition they were in when I first brought them to EBoxLab/DHE Computers. When DataTech Labs received the drives, they still showed signs of being a Mac OS X RAID array, but for some reason they also had Windows file structures and signatures. This Windows data overwrote some of the crucial Mac data structure information, making useful recovery next to impossible.
I don’t know exactly what happened, but I can put together enough of a trail to see what could have happened.
- I pull the drives from my mac and bring them to EBoxLab/DHE Computers.
- EBoxLab/DHE Computers is unable to recover the data, telling me that they tried to mount the drives on both a Windows machine and a Linux machine.
- I take the drives directly from EBoxLab/DHE Computers to Reynolds Data Recovery.
- I take the drives back from Reynolds Data Recovery and take them to DataTech Labs.
Based on this, I believe that the damage was likely done by EBoxLab/DHE Computers – before the drives went to Reynolds. Of course, if that was the case then I have a hard time believing what Mark Tessin of Reynolds told me; that they had evaluated the drives and had begun recovery. There isn’t really a way for me to know conclusively either way, so I’m pretty much SOL.
End result of this fiasco: I lost some work and some photos, but thanks to the backups I did have it wasn’t nearly as catastrophic as it could have been.
Like I said though, the guys at DataTech Labs really impressed me. Even though they couldn’t do a normal recovery, they really went above and beyond to try to get something useable off the drive. They outlined to me all the different techniques they used – it was pretty impressive.
Unfortunately, in the end they were only able to do what they called a “raw recovery”. All file information like file names, file dates, etc. was lost, but they tried to reconstruct the files themselves. So I’ve got a big mess of files to sort through – or not, I haven’t really decided yet.
Again, my highest recommendation to the folks at DataTech Labs. I’m technical enough to have a pretty good bullshit detector (and to be pretty skeptical given what I went through before getting to them), and these guys are 100% straight shooters. They gave me real status information along the way, were easy to get in touch with and completely earned my trust. If you need data recovery in the Denver area, don’t mess around – contact DataTech Labs first.
- Of course, I have no real way of knowing if this is actually Mark Tessin’s son or not – the commenter used ‘Pballinghick98@hotmail.com’ as an e-mail address and a local IP address if that is at all helpful. [back]
- The Reynolds web site seems to have gone away completely now. [back]
This post is part of the thread: Hard Drive Recovery – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.
As a side note, I found the BBB link from the comment by Kris on your previous post interesting. Reynolds now has 2 reports with the BBB and apparently haven’t returned their calls either, earning them an unsatisfactory rating…
I suppose it could be considered slightly comforting that you’re not the only one getting ignored. 😉
Oh they are back in business and nothing has changed, still have phone line problems my dirve and my money.
Weird was I had a personal referral and this person had a successful interaction with them.
I wonder if they recover the “easy stuff” the stuff that software tools can do and stall and delay on the hard stuff.
I noticed their video, hardly shows a clean room, looks like an office and they wear a mask, but don’t cover their hair or anything…
Did you or anyone elses ever get your money back?
Off to paypal….
I had a similar experience where I looked for a local shop to recover my data. When none of them seemed appealing for the prices quoted, I started to look around online.
I stumbled upon DriveFish (http://www.drivefish.com) and noticed that they offered a very low flat rate ($199). I was skeptical at first, but since they only charge you if they can recover your data, I figured it was worth a shot.
They were able to recover all of my data very quickly, and I was only charged the flat fee. I very highly recommend this service.
So also found drivefish.com after months of trying to get some data recovered from my failed macbook hard drive. I was quoted around $200 by data recovery labs and was also told by some other people that the data could not be recovered. As a last ditch effort I sent my hard drive to drivefish. After a week they called me to tell me they had recovered my documents and music but not the pictures I really wanted ( I spent 6 months abroad w/out backing up anything! stupid me!) they said they would continue to work on it. They called me again today after another email confirming they were still trying to say they recovered everything!! This service is amazing, they worked really hard to recover my pictures and the price is amazing. They were also prompt about calling or emailing me to update me on the status since it took a little longer than normal. I would highly highly recommend this service! Drivefish is awesome!
I meant $2000 not $200 by data recovery labs! oops!
Drivefish is a bait and switch operation like their name implies (fish). Don’t waste your time. I read this post and tried. Bad news. The above post probably written by their team.
Ron:
My name is Baird and I own DriveFish.com. I tried to locate your contact information so I could call or write to address your concerns but I can not find any record of you ever being a customer.
DriveFish has always offered a flat fee for recovery – $199. This price is never increased for any reason. We offer free diagnosis, great customer service and will even advise you on how you can attempt to recover the data yourself if it isn’t worth $199 to you – just read our blog.
I hope anyone reading this will reconsider the validity of the above comment. DriveFish prides itself on being customer service centered. If anyone ever has a complaint or suggestion I urge them to call 866-DRIVEFISH (374-8334) and ask to speak with me personally – I’d be happy to help you!
Thanks!