A manager came to me with a report of what sounded like a failing hard drive. It didn't take me long to see that there was something seriously wrong with the drive. I offered him three options; expensive ($500-3000 with Kroll Ontrack), the inexpensive ($300-700 with Gillware), or the extremely cheap (me trying things that have worked for me in the past).
A call to Kroll Ontrack got me the address to ship the drive to and the information that needed to be included with the drive. It would be $100 to diagnosis the drive. That gets a list of files they can recover and a quote for what it would cost to get the data back.
For this particular drive, it was $1500 to recover the data. It was extra for media to get the data back on. $10/dvd, $2/cd, or usb/firewire drives at about twice market price. The drive turned out to be made by AMS and was shipped in a custom labeled box just for Ontrack.
Between first call and recieving the data back on a drive it was 14 days; several of those days were spent by me getting approval to possibly spend the money, by our lawyer reading their paperwork, and by our accounts payable person arranging payment.
Everything about my experience with Ontrack was well executred. I had a single point of contact for all matters. I was kept in the loop about the processing of the job through the various stages of work. All in all great experience and I would happily recommend them.
