What If You Only Recover Some of My Data?

You see a complete listing of what we recovered before you pay anything, and below 99% of sectors you can decline. $300 Data Recovery sends a file listing showing every file we retrieved and its condition. You decide from there.

The one line to know: if we recover 99% or more of the sectors on your device, the recovery counts as successful and the fee is due. That threshold is stated in the mail-in and drop-off forms.

What is a file listing?

An HTML document showing every file and folder we recovered, with the original names and folder structure preserved, plus an indication of each file’s condition.

It is a listing, not the data. You can’t open or download files from it. It exists so you can confirm the things you care about are actually there before money changes hands.

Files are marked so you can tell what state they’re in:

  • Good means the file was recovered completely and should open normally.
  • Bad means the file was recovered with missing or damaged sectors. It may open partially, or not at all.
  • A red X marks files we could not recover.

Both Good and Bad files are written to your transfer drive. We don’t withhold partial files; a damaged video that plays for thirty seconds is sometimes worth more to someone than nothing.

What happens if the recovery is partial?

It depends which side of the 99% line you’re on.

Result What happens
99% or more of sectors recovered Considered a successful recovery. The tier price is due and the recovery can’t be declined.
Less than 99% of sectors recovered You review the listing and choose whether to proceed. If you decline, you pay the $100 labor fee and any up-front charges that already applied.
Nothing recovered No recovery fee. See no data, no fee.

In plain terms: at $300 Data Recovery, a recovery of 99% of sectors or more is a completed job at the tier price. Below that you get to look first and decide, and declining costs $100 plus whatever was already charged up front.

Why is the 99% threshold set where it is?

Because in practice a recovery above 99% of sectors is a full recovery from the customer’s point of view. The remaining fraction is usually unallocated space or system areas rather than your files.

Setting the line publicly, rather than deciding case by case, means neither side is negotiating after the work is done. You know the rule before you send the drive.

Can I get a partial recovery on purpose to save money?

Not as a discount, no. The price is set by device capacity, not by how much comes back.

But there is a related option worth knowing about. If your drive has failed heads and the donor drive cost is a problem, we can often disable the bad head in the drive’s firmware, non-destructively, and read your data from the remaining good heads. You lose whatever lived on the failed head’s surfaces, but you avoid the donor cost entirely.

That is a real alternative for people for whom the donor is the deciding factor. Ask us about it rather than walking away.

I declined, and now I’ve changed my mind. Can I still get my data?

Often yes, if we still have it on file. A $100 Moving Fee applies to re-transferring already-recovered data, with the transfer drive and shipping billed separately at standard rates.

If we’ve already cleared the data, a new recovery would be required, which means starting over at the full price. So if you’re uncertain, tell us rather than letting it lapse.

Can I request only specific files to lower the price?

No. $300 Data Recovery doesn’t do specific-files-only recoveries.

The reason is that we can’t locate individual files without imaging the device first, and imaging is the overwhelming majority of the work. Recovering one photo costs the same as recovering everything, because getting to the point of seeing that photo requires the same effort either way.

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