Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Harddrive Repair Prices

Marcus Friedlander

Marcus Friedlander

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 30, 2014
Messages
1,124
Reaction score
2
Points
38
Location
Los Angeles
Hello everyone,

I have a client who is requesting files from a four year old project (their backup of the files is missing apparently). So I dug through my drive storage and found the drive, but its having trouble mounting (it spins up, but doesn't mount and then also gives a warning beep alerting me that there is an issue).

So I brought it to a repair center near my house, assuming it would be a relatively easy/cheap process. But the repair center is telling me that I'll need to cannibalize another identical drive (which I happen to have) in order to repair the read/write head of my first drive, and that the whole process will cost $1,280 dollars (not including the cost of sacrificing one of my drives.)

Is that fairly standard pricing? To me that seems outrageously high? I was expecting it to be closer to the 100-350 range for the service. But I've never had to do something like this before so I don't really have experience in this.

I'd love to hear from someone else, if they have more knowledge on this side of the tech world.

Thanks!
 
Thanks!
 
I went through a failure recently and was shocked by the cost, as well.
 
If it's the read head, that sounds reasonable.

Often repairs are cheaper because it's just the controller board that needs switching out. For anything actually inside the casing, I'd expect anything in the $1k - $10k+ range.
 
Had a similar problem over the summer and went to multiple services for quotes and ended up costing $4,400. It still spinned. Unreal the cost
 
Our parent company has a data recovery department specializing in hard drives for our local Columbus OH market.

The first thing is beware of the scammers! Almost all data recovery places on google are fake virtual offices or UPS drop offs. Just google the address and you'll see it's a Regus or Intelligent Office Solution etc. All the legit places do not practice this scammy practice.

Flat rate shops means they will do a level 1 or level 2 recovery but just say not recoverable if it's a level 3 needing parts swapped.

Also, do not goto a computer repair shop. Only trust a data recovery specialized place. Computer repair shops are more than likely going to run some basic $50 software instead of using professional tools and can likely make your data unrecoverable since they have no control over the heads.

As for cannibalizing another drive of the same type that is common practice for whats called a Level 3 recovery. Sometimes you may go through 4-5 donor drives and they have to be manufactured within a certain timeframe as not all drives are made equal even though they have the same model and part number. If you do require heads you'll usually see $1000-$2500 charges on average. If you have a helium sealed drive which most drives over 8TB you are then you're looking around 5k.

If you're shipping a drive out, Drivesavers is your best bet located in California.


Last but not least - shameless plug: If you used LTO tape you wouldn't need to be dealing with this.
 
Ty Maier said:
Had a similar problem over the summer and went to multiple services for quotes and ended up costing $4,400. It still spinned. Unreal the cost
Click to expand...

Years ago when I was working at a research hospital a researcher had a hard drive failure. She was working on her doctorate and never backed up the 2 years of research data on her laptop. Cost her $4K to have the data recovered. She was lucky.
 
Yes, that pricing, for what you are describing, is about right. Once the drive has to be taken apart, etc., it gets more expensive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top