This is an odd thing for me to write, but it comes up constantly and nobody in this industry publishes it. Here are the situations where my honest advice is to keep your money.
1. The data exists somewhere else
The most common one, and the one people skip because they’re panicking.
Before spending anything, check:
- Cloud sync. OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox. Sync is on by default for a lot of people, and Documents and Desktop folders are often included without anyone deciding to.
- Google Photos or iCloud Photos. Most phone photos are already on a server. This resolves a surprising share of “I lost all my pictures” cases in about five minutes.
- Email. Anything you ever sent someone is in your sent folder.
- The other computer. Old laptops and machines you handed down.
- Another external drive in a drawer, from the last time you meant to get organized.
- The original source. Music you bought, software you downloaded, documents your accountant also has.
I’d genuinely rather you find it in your own account than pay me. Spend fifteen minutes on this before anything else.
2. You have a backup and haven’t checked it
Sounds obvious; happens weekly. People with working backups call about recovery because in the panic they forgot the backup existed, or assumed it stopped working.
Check the backup before you ship the drive. If it has what you need, you’re done.
3. The data isn’t worth what it costs
Recovery on a failed drive runs from $150 into the several hundreds, and cleanroom cases run into the thousands.
Some data doesn’t justify that, and there’s no shame in saying so:
- A media library you can re-download
- Game installs and Steam libraries
- Software you can reinstall
- Work files your employer has on a server
- A drive full of things you’d forgotten you had
The test I’d use: if this were gone forever, would you be upset in a year? If you can’t answer yes quickly, the drive is probably not worth recovering.
Family photos, a business’s records, a dissertation, footage of someone who’s died — those answer themselves. Everything else deserves an honest think.
4. It’s a simple fix you can do yourself
Some cases don’t need a professional at all, and I’ll tell you so at evaluation:
- The drive works but shows the wrong permissions. Taking ownership is a five-minute fix on a healthy drive.
- A cable or enclosure problem. Free to test, and it’s a real share of “dead” drives.
- Files deleted minutes ago from a healthy drive. If the drive is mechanically fine and you’ve stopped using it, reputable recovery software has a decent chance. The honest comparison is here.
- A phone that still powers on. Back it up yourself; you don’t need a lab.
5. It’s genuinely unrecoverable
Paying anyone to attempt these is paying for hope:
- Encrypted with no key. BitLocker, FileVault, a modern phone. This is arithmetic, not difficulty.
- A dead Apple silicon or T2 logic board. The storage is bound to the board.
- Overwritten data. One full pass over the top and it’s gone. Anyone offering electron-microscope recovery is describing a 1996 paper about drive densities that no longer exist.
- Physically destroyed platters. Fire, deep scoring, shattered glass substrates.
- Ransomware decryption. Recovery can hunt for deleted originals; nobody breaks the encryption.
An honest lab tells you this at evaluation and charges nothing. If someone quotes you a price to attempt one of these, that’s the signal to stop.
Free evaluation. If you don't need me, I'll tell you that too.
6. The drive is worth more than the data
Occasionally someone asks about recovering a failed 500 GB drive holding a Steam library. The recovery costs more than a new 2 TB drive, and the games re-download free.
Same for a failed drive holding a full system backup where the original system is fine. You don’t need the backup — you need a new backup drive.
What I’d rather you spend the money on
If you’re weighing a few hundred dollars for recovery on data you’re ambivalent about, consider spending less than that on making sure it doesn’t happen again.
A decent external drive and a cloud subscription costs a fraction of one recovery and covers everything you own going forward. The practical version of that is here.
The number of my customers who become repeat customers is not a statistic I’m proud of. It’s usually the same story: the drive that failed was the backup.
Why I’m telling you this
Partly because it’s true, and partly for a self-interested reason I’ll be upfront about: I’d rather have a reputation as someone who says “you don’t need this” than get one more invoice out of a case that shouldn’t have been a case.
The evaluation is free and it costs me an hour. If that hour ends with you finding your photos in Google Photos, that’s a good outcome — for you obviously, and honestly for me too.
The bottom line
Check your cloud accounts and your backup before you spend anything. Ask whether you’d care about this data in a year. And be skeptical of anyone who quotes a price to recover encrypted data with no key, because that’s the clearest tell in the industry.
Not sure whether your case is worth it? Ask me — the evaluation is free, and “don’t bother” is an answer I give regularly.