“I just want to echo Toby's comments.
I sent my hard drive believing that I'll be made to pay a fix rate of £120+vat (if they could recover my data), which was far more attractive than what many other companies were asking for.
After sending my email, I received a first email saying that my "hard drive was too damaged to be connected" to their data recovery imaging equipment and suggesting that it could be examine in their clean room chamber but that they would charge £55+vat "to produce a quote to repair your drive well enough to be connected to our data recovery equipment."
So basically £55+vat to just get a quote. So much for their "no data, no fee" claim. I was reluctant but given that I had already sent my hard drive, I went ahead with it.
A couple of days later I received another email with their quote: a total of £485+vat (including the £120 no data, no fee) to try to recover the data in my hard drive, with a 50% guarantee of success. In other words, if they were unsuccessful I would have been made to pay £365 + vat (in addition to the £55+vat already paid) and not recover any idea.
Again they left me the choice to go ahead or decline and this time I asked them to return my hard drive (which they did - without charging me for the post).
So they might be very competent in recovering data and my hard drive might have been too damaged (it was disconnected without being ejected) but I find their marketing strategy deceitful. I'd be interested to find out how many customers who have recovered their data have indeed pay £120+vat.”
“They claimed £120 fixed fee and they can recover my data. They got the Hard drive and then said it needed to be opened in a clean room and the cost would be around £500. I told them to leave it and they returned my hard drive. I then took the hard drive to Cheadle Data recovery in Stockport who had a look at the hard drive. They told me what I had been told by Essential data recovery was a pack of lies. Cheadle Data recovery was able to recover the data without using a clean room at half the price quoted by Essential Data.”
“They sell this as a £120+VAT Flat fee - it isn't. I believe the only time this fee would be charged is if the problem was something like a registry/boot error causing the PC not to start up. Anything over and above this will bring hefty Non-Refundable charges.
After an initial check they informed me they would need to open the disk up to see what was wrong - a £55+VAT Non-Refundable Charge straight off the bat. Before proceeding I did ask for a ball park figure and was told could be between £50 and £800 - but it is rare for a disk to be that badly damaged that it would warrant £800 worth of work - so I went ahead. Guess what? The disk was very badly damaged and required £580+VAT worth of spares/work to even attempt to get the data off (@120+VAT) - which I was told would be 50/50 chance. This is for a disk that did nothing more than sit inside a PC as a storage disk - hadn't been in a flood or fire or explosion!
Needless to say I didn't go ahead - and asked for my disks to be returned. Even this took a week as they reckon they were sent out and the post office returned them all to sender accidentally...yeah right - the packaging didn't show they had been through the postage system twice. If you ask me they probably outsource the clean room work and make their money on the easy fixes from non-tech savvy PC users.
The data recovery service sector is a minefield - good luck!”
“From initial contact this company was professional, efficient and honest. Good communication regarding what they could do, what they intended to do and how much the service would cost.
When all data had been lost and other people had tried to retrieve it, Tom and Sarah managed to find and restore the things that mattered. Thank you.
I would definitely recommend their services 10/10 :-)”
“Having giving my damaged disc drive to another repairer who in three weeks had not even started to examine the drive, I tried Essential Data. the response was very quick and Tom and Sarah were both knowledgeable and helpful. I paid for their premium service as the lost data represented 5 years of work and hundreds of precious photos.
It was not cheap since the drive needed rebuilding before the data could be extracted but Tom warned me of this and left me to decided whether I wanted to proceed, Given the importance of the data to me I decided to do so. The drive arrived at Essential data on a Tuesday and the data was returned to me on the Saturday contained on a free replacement external Hard Drive. It was all there.
i am delighted with the service and would recommend Essential Data without reservation.”
“After a Windows 10 update had caused the hard drive in my (8 year old) laptop to become damaged (to the extent where it wasn't possible to do a system repair/system restore), I took my laptop to a computer repair shop. I was told that because it was the hard drive that had been damaged, all my files were effectively lost and it would be highly unlikely that I could get any of them back - but that it might be worth trying a specialist recovery service. Through a quick google search, and after reading lots of positive reviews, we decided Essential Data Recovery sounded like the best bet of me ever getting my files back (without being charged an extortionate amount).
Needless to say the service provided by Sarah (and Tom), was beyond anything that I could have hoped for - recovering almost everything from my damaged drive. Throughout the process I was kept well informed - at any stage where payment was needed, I was continually given the choice of whether to proceed or not.
Overall I cannot thank Sarah & Tom enough for what they have done for me. After a stressful couple of months, this outcome was more than I could have hoped for. Highly recommended!”
“My experience is exactly the same as the ones below.
I paid about £200 for them to tell me it was too damaged and needed the clean room and after the clean room tell me it would be £80 for motherboard, £395 for new heads and another £120 for recovery with a 50% chance of recovery.
I gave up on it and never expected to ever get my data back. Fast forward 6 months and I am lucky enough to end up in a relationship with a guy that owns a data recovery company.
The mother board was broken. It should have been no more than the £80 for the motherboard and £120 for data recovery.
It did not need a clean room and there was nothing wrong with the heads. My partner recovered all my data at the first step of their diagnostic process. He said it was a simple and most normal type of problem.
This company are either incompetent or cowboys. I think it is more the latter.
Avoid at all costs.”
