Drive Disasters: Who Ya Gonna Call?

The world may not stop spinning when your hard drive does, but a drive failure can have disastrous implications. Chances are, your drive is loaded with essential documents and records, and if, like most people, you don't have current backups, you--or your business--may be in serious trouble. Is your data truly toast? Before you fall on your sword, you might make a call to DriveSavers, a company that specializes in disaster recovery. The service will cost you some serious cash, but the company says the odds are nine to one that it will be able to retrieve your precious data from your hard drive.

What's the secret behind DriveSavers' success rate? The company has a clean room with air filtered to 10,000 times purer than normal; in that room, DriveSavers can disassemble, diagnose, and rebuild your drive as needed. DriveSavers also maintains a large inventory of hard drives from which it can utilize parts for the recovery process. If the company doesn't have the proper drive on hand, a staff member dedicated to searching one out is put on the job. And DriveSavers' relationship with the major drive manufacturers allows the company to open your drive without voiding the warranty, which is important since DriveSavers only recovers data--it doesn't refurbish your drive. Once your data is recovered, you can then return the drive to the manufacturer, either for repair or replacement.

DriveSavers first came to my attention after one of my evaluation drives failed, taking three months' worth of data along with it. Although the drive manufacturer was kind enough to revive that drive for me, in the meantime research and word-of-mouth pointed me in the direction of DriveSavers. So, to see how the service worked, I dug out a long-dead 10GB Western Digital Caviar 31300 that had fried when I hooked it up with the computer powered on. The drive had some useful but nonvital data on it--perfect fodder for a DriveSavers service test run.

Counsel and Proceed

A call to the company put me in contact with a "data crisis counselor." Since drive disaster victims understandably can lose their composure in the face of losing hours--even years--of work, DriveSavers provides a counselor to help users take stock of their situation and understand their options. While I wasn't panicked and explained that the recovery would be for review purposes, the counselor walked me through the interview anyway. And judging by her comforting demeanor, users will be in good hands.

One very good piece of advice she immediately relayed was to power down my drive if it makes strange noises, and not power it up again. Every revolution of a disk platter can kill more data if the heads have crashed (which in drive parlance means the heads have made contact with the platter surface). After I related my drive problem and provided relevant information about the size, format, operating system, and so on, I was ready to pick a recovery plan.

DriveSavers offers several recovery plans, ranging from expensive to very expensive, depending on how fast you want your data back, the size of the drive, and how difficult the recovery turns out to be. For folks who need their data right away, there's 24-hour priority service. Less-anxious customers can opt for a one-to-two-business-day standard service or a five-to-seven-business-day economy service. Quotes for recovering the data from my 10GB drive were $1800 to $4600 for priority service, $900 to $2600 for standard, and $575 to $1800 for economy service. A high-security service is available if your drive contains sensitive information; your data will be recovered in a secured area by an engineer with special clearance.

Once the data is recovered, DriveSavers can capture and return the data to you on any media you choose: tape, CD-Recordable, CD-Rewritable, DVD-RAM, DVD-Recordable, and so on. For another $50 DriveSavers will upload your data to its FTP site; you can then download your data 15 minutes after the recovery is complete. The charge for a failed data recovery attempt is $200.

The DriveSavers service isn't cheap, but if you're facing the loss of business documents and records, a novel, a hit song, years of personal financial records, or an irreplaceable family photo album, it's a small price to pay.