THE ONLY DEDICATED MASS STORAGE RECOVERY COMPANY

• RAID Recovery Labs founded the field of RAID data recovery, we are the only dedicated RAID recovery lab in the field of data recovery..


• All recoveries are performed by Raid Recovery Labs engineers, whether it's in-lab, remote or onsite. No brokering or sourcing like so many others do.


• Over 90% of all our recoveries are successfully solved the same day we receive them.


• Our recovery success rate is the highest in the industry and backed by references in every major industry segment and available by request.


• We perform many secondary successful recoveries every month of arrays deemed failed and unrecoverable by other supposed data recovery companies.


• All calls are handled by actual RAID recovery engineers. No sales staff like you'll find at other data recovery companies.


• Straight forward pricing, no sales gimmics, just what you would expect from a professional recovery lab. No vague price ranges and absolutely no pricing based on the value of your data.


• Homeland Security certified to offer Same Day shipping services both domestic and international.


• Lab hours are 24/7, 365 days per year and no emergency fees. We perform emergency recoveries all over the world, working in many different time zones and are always open.


• The only lab to offer discount pricing for Students, Education Institutions, Non-Profits, Military and Government Organizations.

Below is a list of things to avoid performing when your RAID array has failed. If you have performed one or more of the following it does not mean your data is unrecoverable, they can just potentially cause further damage hindering a fully successful recovery.


• Do not reinitialize your RAID array - this can destroy information required to successfully recover your array.


• Do not run FSCK or any FSCK variant - This can damage your file system. MD can still show a valid volume even when the disks have synchronization errors. Running any form of FSCK can cause further damage to your file system.


• Do not run CHKDSK - Depending on the damage to your file system CHDK can cause further damage.


• Do not rebuild your RAID array - Doing so can re-stripe your data causing permanent damage.


• Do not rely on your hardware vendor - Hardware support technicians are not RAID data structure engineers and can caue further damage trying to correct your array at a hardware level.
  

The Industry Warning at the top of our page really says it all. The data recovery industry has exploded with break/fix IT companies armed with inexpensive commercial data recovery tools and no practical experience or training and are offering recovery services. They either damage your data further, destroy it completely or broker it out and jack the price up. Others have formed "brokerages" and have web sites showing they are in every major city and state and have nothing more then a partnership with a data recovery company and use IT shops as fronts or are just a shipping office.

You'll note on every data recovery web site you go to (not ours) they offer a Partnership Program, this means it will cost you, they are not giving their own money away we assure you. They inflate the price for your recovery and from what we have seen not by a little, we're talking thousands to tens of thousands! They work by deep pocket theory and threshold of pain and will hold you and your data hostage until you pay their demands, we're not kidding. This has become a huge problem in this industry and these companies need to be exposed, below are a few things to be aware of and to think about when seeking RAID data recovery services:

• Advertising Hype: Do they make ridiculous claims? World Leader's, 100% guarantee, Fastest and Cheapest, Twice as Fast and Half the cost, etc? These are gimmics and boasts that can't be backed up, like Rated #1....by who?. Nobody can guarantee your recovery until they have fully evaluated your array. Fast and Cheap, well you get what you pay for. We take pride in the fact that we have techniques that yeild about a 90% solve rate the same day, but that's doesn't translate to 100% guarantee. Some arrays depending on both the failure scenario and post failure procedures that might have been attempted to recover the array can create conditions that just takes proper time to correctly and accurately recover from. Would you want it fast and cheap or accurate and correct?



• Domain Name Confusion: RAID Recovery Labs founded the field of dedicated RAID data recovery engineering many years ago. Over the last couple years other companies posing as RAID Recovery Labs have come up with similiar and confusing domain and company names to steer people away to them. They even us our language and name when speaking to them to create further confusion. RAID Recovery Labs Inc., is the authentic RAID recovery lab don't let them confuse you. If your uncertain who your talking to call our 800 number and ask for Mr. Craig Snapp, president and co-founder of RAID Recovery Labs or Dr. Jeremiah Weaver CTO and co-founder, either will be happy to take your direct call.



• Do not tell the person your speaking with "what" the nature of your data is or they will base their pricing on the value of your data. We know your data is valuable or you wouldn't be seeking recovery, don't tell them it's your payroll database, financial's, critical Corp. data, etc., tell them format types (DB's, xls, doc, pdf, etc) but no specifics or they will apply multipliers to the value, we have seen this "deep pocket theory" used all over the data recovery industry.



• Make sure your speaking to an actual engineer, most all of these fake recovery companies have commissioned sales people and to understand the complexities of your recovery, cost to value, you need to speak to an actual recovery engineer.



• Don't go into detail of the urgency of your recovery needs, this just gives them more information to base their pricing on your "threshold of pain" financially, express your timing needs, but nothing further.



• Pricing: Understand the complete breakdown of your recovery costs, request a formal quote if necessary. Vague pricing or arbitrary price ranges are an indicator of incompetence or brokerage. No cost, no data, free evaluations, 100% data recovery guarantee's these are scams, no engineering company can guarantee a recovery they haven't seen yet!



• Free Evaluation: RAID recovery is a extremely intense mathematical problem that requires a highly trained engineer and mathematician. What business can afford an engineer to put hours into a recovery project for free? Nobody works for free! So are they really putting forth their best effort to get your data? No these outfits try and work on a volume basis and if they can't solve it quickly, they fail it and move on to the next sucker. Normally a free evaluation will also come with a vague recovery quote, i.e., $2,500 - $25,000, we had a client that just the other day told us of an outfit in Seattle that quoted this on 8-24-2011. We have performed many secondary recoveries where these outfits told the client their data was unrecoverable and purposely damaged the array further to attempt to keep a reputable lab from recovering it. If you've been told your data is not recoverable call us, don't be tricked into losing your data for a free evaluation. [Update 8-27-2011] the client mentioned above ended up with a final quote of $21,500.00 and came back to us and were recovered for less than half of this!



• Multiple Locations: Nothing says "we don't do our own work" like a map full of pin dots. The scam artists go to great lengths to make themselves look huge, with laboratories in every major city. RAID recovery services is a very small industry of professionals, less then six companies in the world possess the skills necessary to perform RAID recovery. We founded and defined this industry sector and are the only dedicated RAID recovery laboratory, we know the real recovery companies and we can count them on one hand. This tells you how small this industry really is and there's nowhere to be trained in these skills, it's a multidisciplinary engineering environment and not for the amateur armed with a commercial data recovery software.



• Core Competency: Data recovery (single hard drive, camera cards, thumb drives, etc) is not RAID recovery. Raid Recovery is purely complex boolean algebra, damaged equations no less and requires a highly skilled mathematician to perform the recovery. Raid Recovery Labs is a dedicated laboratory for many reasons, one being every recovery is unique in many ways so it's highly complex. Controller and array server/NAS/SAN manufacturers are constantly changing and releasing new array devices and parity formulas and it requires constant R&D to keep up with all the changes. It takes dedication to perform this service effectively and we take this very serious.



• References are always a good idea, this is your data and you should know who your working with. Every data recovery web site has logos of NASA, DoD, major corporations, fancy pictures of "clean rooms", etc., see if they are real. We often see our clients logos posted to their sites, they just downloaded a bunch of impressive looking logo's and post them, whose going to know unless you question it. Most of our clients require full autonomy, they don't want anyone to know they have experienced a potential data loss and they will not allow you to list them in any fashion. 70% of our clients demand this level of autonomy and we respect it, they will however take reference calls for us when the situation is warranted.



• Clean room repair: you will see certifications and pictures of very expensive looking clean rooms, these are always funny to us, look closely, most are pictures of clean rooms for semiconductor manufacturing or medical clean room facilities that have nothing to do with data recovery. You'll see people dressed in clean room suits, breathing apparatus, etc., just ridiculous, a Class 100 clean room is not a facility that requries these things. Hard drive repairs can be a costly procedure depending on the type of damage, but this is not always a requirement in array data recovery. Watch out for unwarranted repair fees based on false "clean room" requirements.



• Did they answer all your questions? Did they give you a clear understanding as to what has happened to your array and the effects it could have on your data? Did they discuss better ways to protect your data in the future based on your failure scenario? Did they offer anything other than a quote?



The best we can do is tell you to use common sense and don't get taken in by gimmic's and hype. Conclude your call with a complete understanding as to what has happened to your array, what is required to recovery it, potential hurdles to overcome, timing & costs. Unless you get at minimum these questions answered, clearly and succinctly, walk away your heading for a huge disappointment and a potentially costly one.