SERT Data Recovery

Let me start by saying SERT Data were great people to work with and honestly had the best price I could find for the task.
My story is a highly unique one but every effort on SERT’s behalf were very helpful. One message they sent me said it all.
«We’re glad to help, it’s all part of making sure you get your files back, which we are committed to. We’re in your corner till the end.» — Thats awesome to hear from a company who’s handling often sensitive/​sentimental data.
The story goes like this. My Drobo machine had gone on the fritz. I had 5 RAIDed drives (Drobo’s proprietary «BeyondRAID») that ware no longer connecting reliably to my computer. Not normal drive reading errors either. Working with Drobo wasn’t proving helpful either, being on the phone with Drobo made my heart sink.
Thus I turned to SERT. After I got the drives and the Drobo to their facilities, Todd Trahan was a great guy to work with. He made every attempt to recover my drives and did so quite well. As an honest person, I must add that not all my data came back in it’s original state BUT there are times in the digital world that you just can’t recover information from. Todd and SERT made every effort they could to get my data back to me and for much of it they succeeded.
It was months of work but Todd didn’t give up and even spoke with Drobo on my behalf to reach as full a recovery as possible, thats when he sent the message I quoted above. Now I have thousands of photos back that I thought I had lost forever.
If reading this review gives you doubts in SERT’s abilities, let me try to explain a few things. Drobo is a highly proprietary company that keeps their technology under hard lock and key, this covers their RAID methods and so recovery from issues is difficult. Even then my issue with my Drobo was, as I see it, a highly rare one. In the future I’d be happy to use SERT again when and if the need arises.
Lessons learned about data recovery:
Always have a backup drive, I use CrashPlan now for unlimited backup of my data. Weight the pros and cons of using a service like CrashPlan or keeping your own drives with copies on a shelf.
I don’t trust Drobo any more. I still have their RAID enclosure and will use it again but I don’t think i’ll be buying enclosures from them again. I haven’t turned the Drobo back on yet or put drives into it. I paid good money for the unit but I will never trust their drive failure detection again.
Use RAID or NAS rated Drives. The heat from the spinning can cause the most short term issues in hard drives, NAS and RAID drives are rated to handle that better. Be sure you know what you’re putting into your enclosures

Excellent service and was able to recover all of my data! They kept me updated all throughout the process and even graciously absorbed the extra cost of a bigger storage device when the one I had previously agreed on buying ended up not holding all of my data!

SERT is an amazing company with great team members. Todd is very responsive and clear which is a great quality. He explains the issues openly and won’t try to confuse you into making a bad decision on your recovery needs. We’ve used them twice now and had wonderful results each time. I’d highly recommend them and plan on using them exclusively for all my future data recovery needs

I knew I had a bigger than usual issue when I couldn’t even get my computer to boot. There was lots of terrible advice online. Like sticking your hard drive in the freezer. I don’t care who it worked for, let me tell you, that is a bad freaking idea. I mean, sure, it’s great IF it works. But if it doesn’t, you risk ruining your hard drive, and I can say for sure, it wouldn’t have worked in my case because my head was not stuck, it was broken, and my platter was damaged. And this is jargon to you unless you’ve been through it or are going through it, but like I said, you don’t really need to understand much more other than DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING. Trust me, I’m Mrs. Fixit myself about most things. Even computer things. Heck, I even tried to see if I could figure out how to fix this myself. If you have any brain cells at all, you will realize once you start looking up these issues that you can NOT fix it yourself.
So when you realize you can’t fix it, what’s the next thing most people do? Look for the person who CAN fix it for the cheapest price possible. Now, I wouldn’t say you want to spend as much money as possible, but… here’s my experience. I sent my hard drive to the cheapest place I could find, and wasted about a week because they couldn’t recover the files. The fact is, the lower level recoveries all cost the same no matter what you go. And the companies that are charging more for the higher end recoveries are doing so *because they can actually do them*. So in the end, you aren’t saving money with those cheaper places. They are all going to do those lower end recoveries for the same price. And if you need a higher end recovery, as I did, you are going to have to go somewhere that offers that… and their prices will be higher. A lot of places SAY they can recover almost anything. That’s nice. But they can’t. So if you want to save time, go straight to the people who do it all. If it’s less work, they’ll give you the same low price as the other guys. If it’s more work, they’ll charge you the higher price, yeah, but the other place was never going to be able to do it anyway. Fact is, if you need those files, you have to pay for them.
After wasting a week of my VALUABLE time, I finally took my drive to the people who would actually end up helping me. Sert Data Recovery. And of course I balked when I heard how much it would be for a level 3 recovery. However, they were pretty awesome about explaining the process to me, which really helped me to understand WHY the level 3 recoveries cost so much. For example, they needed factor in the need for parts into their budget as well as the time that would be involved in an more intensive recovery. They need to have the appropriate «clean room» and, mind you, some places say they have one but actually DON’T because they outsource. So to find a reputable company like Sert is not an easy feat.
I had to think about whether the recovery was worth it. Yes, I had tons of pictures of the kids on my computer that I foolishly didn’t backup anywhere else… but I also had tons of their pictures elsewhere, and I had the MEMORIES which frankly is the important thing. I thought it would be nice to get those back… but I was most concerned with writing and work related files. I had to ask myself… how long will it take me to redo all this work? How much money could I make during those hours that I WASN’T redoing the work. So while it was a bigger bill than I could afford, the only thing more expensive in the end would have been redoing that work. So I had to cough up my credit card and should be paying it off for the rest of the year… but that will be possible since I can work and instead or readoing my work. So that’s WHY I went along with it and WHY it costs so much. I hate to break it to anyone hoping for some magical news, but it is what it is.
Overall, I’m glad I went with SERT. They kept me updated every step of the way, and their turnaround time with fair. They gave me a price upfront, which helped (some places were like, «it’s $x-$y an hour and can take x hours to y hours to complete» … so it was like, «This is gonna cost you anywhere from $ 800 to $ 8000») Yeah, that wasn’t going to fly. And PS, SERT did not charge me thousands for my recovery. They were fair. They also recovered over 20,000 files. ALL of my most important files were recovered. Some of the photoshop files and image files were corrupted, but I got all of my important WORD documents.
And the moral of this story is… don’t do that again! But from now on, I’ll handle my computer with more care AND I’ll back everything up. However, we kinda all already know we SHOULD do that, don’t we? Sometimes we just have to learn our lesson the hard way. So if you are in the boat I’m in now – or find yourself there sometime in the future – I recommend you save yourself the time and headache and just go straight to SERT. I wish I had.

Horrible service. Hard to reach them on the phone. The person who finally responded was named Todd. No customer service skills. He was completely uncaring. Claims they did not receive the flash drive even though clear tracking showed it was delivered to their office. Under no circumstances would I recommend this service.

A top notch and affordable data recovery solutions company!

These guys were fantastic! From the initial phone consultation, to keeping me apprised with regular email/​phone updates at each step along the way, I was very impressed with their ability to deliver what they promise: data recovery. Not only were they able to retrieve 100% of my flash drive contents (broken connector), they even went the extra mile and emailed a time-​sensitive file to me as soon as it was recovered prior to returning the restored flash drive – without charge. Todd and John were both friendly and extremely helpful. Excellent customer service, and worth every penny.