Outsource Data RecoveryReviews of outsourcedatarecovery.com

Communication was professional and generally quick, except for the Friday before Memorial Day, which is not unexpected. Data recovery prices are competitive. Our recovery of a Windows 10 boot 1TB hard drive ended up around $600. There are a few extra charges not included in the estimate, like $25 shipping, $12 insurance, $10 to return your original HD back, and $79 to purchase an external 1TB USB3.0 HD to return your data. It had been a month since we sent in the drive, and did not want to wait an additional week or two to send them an external drive. It seems the only way to get your data back is to pay OVER the original estimate. This would all be a 3.5 or 4 star rating, but they shipped INCOMPLETE data! There was a 100 GB difference in the amount of data on the original HD and their list of recovered files. When asked, Alex stated that they usually leave out the Windows folder. I replied that we needed a FULL image of the data, including the Windows folder, so we could do a full restore. Unfortunately what we received did not include the Windows folder, so we only got back 300 GB of the original 400 GB. The original drive was 1TB and the replacement drive we purchased from them was 1TB for 400GB of data, there was no reason to leave out the Windows folder. The original estimate was supposed to be for all of our data.

Although they were able to retrieve some files, there were hundreds of photos that were apparently unrecoverable. The cost to us was over $1,300. My wife was especially unhappy.

"Bait and Switch" is how I would best describe Outsource Data Recovery. They prominently advertise a $299 price -- but then once they had my hard drive, they upped the price to $750. After reluctantly agreeing to that, they wanted another previously unmentioned and not included $100 for the media, for a total of $850. So, not one, but two, bait and switches. Given that the data needed to go on something, why wouldn't that be included in the previous cost? It's a necessary step -- it should be quoted in the price. The quality of the service was great -- everything was there. But they did not charge their first advertised price. Or even their second offered price. I paid over $850. If I'd known it was going to cost $850 to start with, I would have gone with another company.

Took over a month to evaluate the drive only to find out it cannot be repaired. edit: If your drive cost over $60 on DonorDrive don't bother sending it in. It may be a free diagnosis but shipping it back cost money.

Quite a disappointing experience! What was projected as 3 weeks by ODR, took 6+ weeks. It seemed the only way we made progress was to contact ODR and ask for status. Then they would inform us that they were waiting for donated parts (yet we are paying for the service?). Provided 2 PCBs with ROM chips for like hard drives after we asked how can we help (3+ weeks in to this activity) or we might still be waiting. We did get some data recovered, and that was great. That's what we were hoping for in the first place. But the overall process was just too painful. The customer relationship experience was poor at best, thus this rating. We will look elsewhere if we ever need a recovery again.

I returned my circuit card for a new /used one - they needed my bios load for the newer one. Just before I returned it, I was actually able to partition and format some unused space on the hard drive. The rest showed up as unformatted partitions. When I received the replacement board, I installed it and the device driver installed just fine, but I immediately (within 5 minutes) got a BSOD from the drive. Since then it doesn't even see the drive interface. I talked to my contact there, and he said it must be the hard drive, send it to us and we can milk you for more money! (He said analyze the drive, but I just wanted a working board) The newer board also had several extra parts on the CCA, but I assumed they did their homework before sending it back. Live and learn? I could have procured the same board for about 1/2 of what I paid, but I was bamboozled after looking for bad reviews. (I found only 1 or 2 - which is generally acceptable). Review: I sent in a semi-working board, and I was returned 2 non working boards. I was told something that I never experienced since 1984 - working in PC and Military avionic hardware and software - that what I was returned was working even though the system is unable to see the hard drive now at all. At bare minimum (since no smoke was released from the CCA) the system should see "something" when it was in an USB interface (I tried 2 types) and/or connected directly to the motherboard, it sees it as an imminent failure pending (code 5?) from the smart drive circuitry.