Mortas
YMMV
The following is my experience with Outsource Data Recovery from start to finish. I woke one day to find that my HDD would not boot, no spin, no noise, no nothing. I think looked around for different methods of fixing it, determining it would be best to have it shipped off to a third party as to avoid potential data loss. Upon checking many companies for both reviews and pricing, I finally decided upon this company as from the description of the failure would seem to be an easy PCB fix, which from my research showed that they would be the most cost effective at fixing. I almost missed their initial message from when they got the drive as their email went to spam which I could not access via my phone and had to use another computer to even see it. Then, when they had received it, I was informed that the failure was much more severe and that they wanted about $1,000 to recover the data from it. With that pricing I decided to shop around once more and found a place willing to do it for much, much cheaper. Upon telling them (ODR) this, and requesting my HDD be returned, and having paid for it to be as such, I was informed that their "quote" on the website was misinformed and that it would actually cost half that and asking if I would like them to try recovering it for that new price. To be candid, that whole situation made me feel uneasy, as if they were trying to get as much money from me as they could, but I chose to give them the benefit of the doubt as with the new price it would run me about the same cost as buying a replacement drive and sending it and the HDD that needed to be recovered to the cheaper place, with even more time wasted for shipping and additional diagnostics. After recovery, they had informed me that they posted a list of the files recovered from the hard drive for me to verify before any further exchanges are made. However, on no device did that list show up on their site (a recurring theme being issues with the site). I contacted them via email and never got a response, so I messaged them through their live help on the site and they sent me a downloadable version soon after. Unfortunately I was unable to view said document on my phone so I had to use another computer to verify the data. Things seemed to be in order, so I had them complete the transaction. I got the drive back on a toshiba usb HDD that my computer couldn't read, and had to get a new HDD anyways and do a fresh install before I could even access the data. Then the drive wouldn't read until I completely updated and downloaded usb 3.0 drivers which in all took about 2 days to do. (There were a lot of updates on a fresh install of windows 7) I finally got the drive working and have been systematically (and slowly) going through it to get all my data back in place. While I didn't realize it at the time, you have to request your old drive back as well or they do not return it to you. I have also learned since that I was charged for the first return when the price was originally posted at its bloated value and had not been refunded. I have since contacted them about it, which they said they would refund me that cost, though it has yet to be reflected in my online account as of writing this. I would have to say that the site is by no means mobile friendly and I have been fortunate to have access to a secondary computer on occasion through this process, else my experience with this would have been worse. I can not in good conscience give a higher rating than 3 stars as the entire experience has been a relative mess. However, they were able to eventually recover my data in a timely fashion, and aside from the misinformation and lack of functionality from the site, they were overall helpful. I would have hoped to have received a bootable clone of my drive instead of a cheap external drive (from checking online the drive themselves cost about $50 to consumers) or at least an SSD with how much of a premium was charged for it, or at least given a heads up that I would need to spend even more money just to be able to use my computer again. Each fee you pay will be heavily inflated, as shipping cost me twice as much to receive as it did to send, with half as much weight and protection. (I sent a medium flat rate box, they sent a usps padded envelope). That being said, I would use the service again exclusively to fix PCB problems with a prepaid return on shipping, but I would likely go somewhere else were there to be any significant issues with a HDD in the future.