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General discussion

Data recovery business - where to start?

Nov 21, 2008 7:03PM PST

hi, I'm interested in starting a data recovery business. What i really want to know is what kind of equipment they use to recover data from lost hard drives and how you get data back from formatted disks? does anyone know any good books to read on this or where I would buy the hardware I would need?

Discussion is locked

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um
Nov 24, 2008 5:07AM PST

i'm sort-of an expert in this area

one suggestion-
pclinux .93 (live)
good for retrieving data from hard drives that are corrupted in mft/filesystem and seen as useless/unrecognizable to windows
recovering data from a bad FAT32 or NTFS drive works best with this o/s


about software that can recover data from formatted drives, see below-
http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

hope this helps

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Data recovery business - where to start?
Jun 3, 2010 4:15PM PDT

Hello al20051,As I have suggested to others, there is one place to prepare yourself for data recovery business, that's http://www.datarecoverytools.co.uk/

Before entering data recovery business, you should prepare yourself with the following:

What

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Well....
Jun 7, 2010 9:58AM PDT

... if you have to ask, you do not have enough computer knowledge and experience. I suggest taking a course on computers [ computer science, computer repais,....computer hardware management, etc..] to boost up your knowledge.... then you do not need to ask. Not meant to discourage, but if you ae asking about starting a business, you need a good solid foundation on the subject. As suggested, there are lots of information on the www, but not enough for making it a business.

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Re: buy data recovery tools and books
Sep 26, 2010 1:28PM PDT

hello, to start data recovery business is really not easy. To have one clean room,to have good data recovery tools(hardware and software), besides, you need to understand the drives and learn what's wrong with the drives. Otherwise, you may destroy the data. So prepare for it if you decide to go for this business.

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This is scary.
Apr 11, 2011 2:38PM PDT

The idea that a data recovery company would start like this explains the horror stories I hear out there. I can only hope that folk read this discussion and listen carefully to who ever claims to be a data recovery specialist. And a clear sign would be that they have been at this for less than a decade.

The good people have been at this a long time. It's your data at stake and why go with the newbie?
Bob

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Question about starting a Data Recovery business
Dec 20, 2014 11:27AM PST

HI guys, my name is James....
I am currently listed on Thumbtack for computer repair and website desing work. Lately, I have been getting about 7-10 requests a week for data recovery work. So, I started doing some homework....I have some questions for those of you who know more about this than me.....I want to start doing data recovery.....The first step I took was to download all the free data recovery programs I could find....Also, I see that some of the clients were looking to recovery about 2 TB worth of info from their drives. I have one lined up, no prob. An external 2 TB hard drive for about $85.00 My questions are these:
Should I only accept drives that my computer can read and identify? for example: if i hook up a drive and my computer cant see that drive, is it going to be harder to do? Also, I'm getting a lot of requests where people are saying that their drives are clicking.....does that pretty much mean that their drive is failing? I'm not willing to change out circuit boards and all that. I just want to make this simple and when I hook up their drive, be able to see it, and then run the software to recover data. Also, should I stick with 60 dollars for the first 10 gigs and .25 cents for every gig after that? Should I say that if I dont recover any data, there is no charge? OR should I say that even if I dont recover anything, that there will be a minimum charge of say....$25 or sumptin....I really need some good opinions because these jobs are falling in my lap....Thanks everyone....

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Not For "Newbies"...
Dec 22, 2014 3:48AM PST

Since this is a forum for new computer users, I don't think you'll get too many good suggestions here. But most importantly, based upon your questions, you may need more experience in the file before taking on such jobs. I'll suggest you try working for a data recovery specialist/company. They can lead in you the right direction. Basic computer repair and data recovery are two different skill sets and two different sets of knowledge. Recovering data from a 2 TB drive, or potentially LOSING the data from that drive can involve a lot of valuable files, which could lead to expensive damage charges to you.

Know your stuff before you jump into the water.

Hope this helps.

Grif