Know when to "throw in the towel"
IT staff often make the mistake of not knowing when to give up, said Margeson. "They don't know when to throw in the towel," he said. "They make the disaster bigger, with good intentions."
Enterprises shouldn't expect their IT staff to be data recovery experts either, Margeson added. "How do you know how to fix something if you don't really know what's wrong? You can't expect your IT staff to know everything," he said.
One obvious indicator of a hard drive crash is sound, said Riddell, such as a clicking, scratching or squealing coming from the server. "That's when you want to shut down right away because if you keep going, what you're doing is destroying data," he explained. "The longer you try and work moving physical drives, the greater the likelihood that you're going to lose more data."
Find a reputable service -- how to distinguish the good from the bad
A reputable firm will provide an up-front quote, according to Riddell, rather than ask you to send in the media first. "We already know from experience, in all likelihood, what we are going to have to do to recover that data," he said.
The estimate should also indicate the data you will get back for that price, added Riddell. "Ontrack will supply a full comprehensive file listing to the customer after we evaluate the system to make sure they know what data they are going to get back when we quote the price, before they make any decisions," he said.
There shouldn't be any hidden costs, said Margeson. "Data recovery can be expensive -- that's what has drawn a lot people into thinking and pretending they can recover data -- but you need to move with assurance ... don't pay for diagnostics, don't pay for parts ... if they are a real data recovery company, they have the inventory at their disposal," he said.
If you call a data recovery firm and they put you off or have to call you back, that's a bad sign, warned Riddell. "A good data service rep will have the answers right away," he said. "If they don't, they'll get someone on the phone with you that knows the answers. You want to make sure that they are able to answer your questions right off the bat."
About 75 per cent of CBL's projects last year involved defective disk drives, Margeson pointed out. "There isn't any software in the world that can repair or get data from a defective drive," he said.
Finding a good data recovery firm starts with referrals from friends and colleagues, said Margeson, but it's important to find a company that can cope with "just about anything."