By Steve Kruschen ©2001 All Rights Reserved
July 20, 2001 - Never mind the date to the left because the advice you are going to read is timeless! Get to know DriveSavers. You'll be glad you did and you can all sleep better knowing help is there when it is needed. It's all a matter of just how valuable your data is.
This is NOT a paid advertisement, just as all the other articles I write are NOT paid advertisements. I write what I do because I believe and know to be true what I say and write, mostly from first hand experience. Think of this as an important public service, because that is how I feel about the DriveSavers operation, recovering data from Macs and PCs since 1985.
Hard drives are getting bigger and bigger. They're exceeding 100 GB in consumer computers and who knows where it will go from here. Who needs such a large drive?
Well, many of you do, or you will soon enough. As you create and edit your own home videos, you'll need tons of storage to work with the files. Those MP3 files also have to go somewhere. Al those digital photos aren't on film stored in shoeboxes. They're probably on your hard drive.
Now, if you're smart and NOT lazy, you have gotten the message already that it's a good idea to store all those music and image files on a CD you can burn yourself. If you're smart and NOT lazy, you have backed up your irreplaceable data files (those documents and work projects that took so long to complete, not to mention all your financial data), just in case a tragedy strikes. By the way, I'm lazy.
You know the tragedies, don't you? The hard drive fails. Kaput. That's all, folks. Or, you drop your laptop and toast the drive. Worse yet, your home or office burns, taking with it your computer and the backup discs you made because you keep the backup in the same place as the original files. You know, in the drawer, right there next to you. Consider yourself lucky if the tragedy bug has never bitten you.
How do you back up one of those monster drives? With ANOTHER monster drive, that's how.
And now, there are all those digital cameras using digital media - Compact Flash cards, Multimedia cards, and al the rest, even Zip, Jaz, the new Peerless drives from Iomega, magneto-optical cartridges, the old SyQuest cartridges and others.
If there is a failure, or should I say, WHEN there is a failure, who are you going to call? The company of professionals I know and trust is called DriveSavers.
Even though I usually back up my data, though not as often as I should, one day, a drive failed. It just quit working. I heard the drive whirring, but it was not accessible as far as my computer was concerned. It was, at least, electronically, toasted. I really needed those files. I was sunk and heartsick.
For as long as I can remember, I'd seen their ads in the back of the now defunct Macweek weekly newspaper. That's how I knew the name. I visited them on the Web at www.drivesavers.com and looked around. I saw their Museum of Disc-asters where crushed, burned and drowned computers and drives are pictured. DriveSavers recovered data from them all!
I called and made arrangements to ship the drive. All the data, every last byte of it, was recovered. I opted to have it put on DVDs. It took just two days! I was impressed. I was so impressed that I decided to visit their offices in Novato, California and meet with their founder, Scott Gaidano, and several staffers.
Scott's an interesting guy. You'd like him. He's passionate about what his company does and he's got a great collection of interesting old gadgetry, but that's another story.
I toured the facility and saw the dedicated and eminently professional staff busily saving data all over the place from within their secure facility. They even have completely dust-free clean rooms where they can disassemble a drive, if needed (most of the time it is NOT needed), and remove the platters from inside the drive. Computer manufacturers recognize their expertise and continue to honor the warranty on the drive even after DriveSavers has been inside!
In order to do what they do, DriveSavers must maintain a collection of every kind of drive out there, so they can match it to the affected customer drive. DriveSavers has developed proprietary technology and software that enables them to get the data off an otherwise useless and inoperative drive. It's amazing.
I was told the story about federal government agents who had brought in a damaged drive with top-secret data on it. The agent, of course, could not let the drive out of his sight. Nevertheless, he was not permitted to view the computer screen of the technician who was saving the data and the drive. Even HE was not allowed to see the DriveSaver secret operation to learn how they do what they do.
There is a huge list of important people and businesses that have relied upon DriveSavers to save their butts in all kinds of circumstances.
The service is not inexpensive, but what is YOUR data worth? Prices are all over the map, depending upon the type of media and the job that is needed to recover the data. The job could be in the low to mid hundreds of dollars to well over a thousand dollars, or more. It just depends upon the job.
So, the bottom line is this. First of all, write down and save in a safe place the DriveSavers toll-free phone number - 1-800-440-1904. Visit their Website for toll-free international dialing instructions.
Next, visit them on the Web and cruise around. It's a fun site to visit and you'll learn something. Be SURE to read the RECOVERY TIPS so you don't make a serious, possibly catastrophic (meaning more expensive) error that further damages your drive if you suspect a problem, or even if you do not suspect a problem but you hear strange noises. They are warning signs.
Remember to back up your data regularly, but also remember that another hard drive or something such as a tape drive, a Zip or Jaz disc is NOT infallible, so even your backup on one of those is not bulletproof. If it's valuable to you or your company, then take steps to protect the data as best you can. There's only so much that can be done. Saving data to a CD or DVD is much more reliable, but still not perfect.
Finally, DON'T FORGET that you know about DriveSavers and that they are there to help you, especially when you feel desperate. Don't assume that your data is unrecoverable. DriveSavers can probably recover the data from wherever it is and from whatever the media type, no matter the operating system, Windows, Mac, Unix and all the rest - Hard drives, floppies, CD-ROM, the newer "digital film" flash media, removable and magneto-optical cartridges. They do it all.
DriveSavers helped me, they've helped thousands of others, and they can help you. It's that simple.
Tell your friends, relatives and co-workers about DriveSavers and let them know that Mr. Gadget proudly recommends them without hesitation (and without any payment, either, I might add. That's NOT how Mr. Gadget works!). I'm a customer and I hope I never need their services again. But, if I experience another failure with any of my media, I know who to call and to trust to make things right again.
