Data recovery questions & answers

What to do if you encountered a data loss or hard drive crush situation?

If you have recognized the situation where you lost your word documents, pictures or any other valuable data, or your system became unstable, or you see an error message “Boot sector not found or hard disk failure”, we suggest you turning off the computer power immediately, and contacting us at 613-225-7870 or using our toll-free number 1-888-307-3676. Our engineers will provide you with an emergency advice.

Universal Magic Tool to recover data. Myth or reality?

Unfortunately, there is no such device on earth. Clients always ask if it's possible to take the disk platters and read them somewhere using some miracle machine. No, it's not, and if anyone tells you the opposite - think twice. Neither us, nor any other data recovery company or anyone else is able to do that. Hard drive is a very complex device. Data recovery can be compared to a brain surgery of a human. Yes, it is that complicated. When drives need to be opened for mechanical work, we turn into doctors and start the surgery.

Can I recover lost files by myself?

Statistics shows that "most do it yourself" attempt lead to further damages to already problematic media. If your data is important to you, we do not suggest you risk recovering it by yourself.
Installing any application after the data loss occurred you have a great risk never recovering your data, as by installing new software you might overwrite the area on the hard drive that contains your lost files. Capital Data Recovery Inc engineers use special equipment that can access the core of the hard drive and perform the proper diagnose and eventually fix the drive and recover the data.

How can I be sure of confidentiality of my data?

Capital Data Recovery Inc. welcomes signing a non-disclosure agreement with its customers. After we recover your drive, and you confirm the successful restore of you data, Capital Data Recovery Inc. engineers will use special high security tools and applications to ensure the permanent deletion of your data from our backup drives.

I forgot the password for my hard drive, what should I do?

Not a problem. Call Capital Data Recovery Inc. and our engineers will be happy to assist you. Password protected drives can also be recovered. You will have to sign a document authorizing Capital Data Recovery Inc. to deactivate the password protection and access the drive.

Does Capital Data Recovery Inc keep my recovered data?

For your convenience and peace of mind, we keep a copy of recovered data for a period of 5 days, allowing you to safely verify and backup the data. After 5 days, we securely and irreversibly wipe our copy of the recovered contents using specialized equipment. Also, your damaged device will be recycled in an environmentally responsible manner.

Our data recovery process starts with an evaluation of your failed device. You can either provide the device in person during our business hours, or you can contact us for a prepaid shipping label if you are not local.
Once the device is received, our engineers will perform the evaluation to determine the scope of work, chances of success and ETA. Upon completion of the evaluation, you will be provided a firm, no obligation price quote, which is payable upon successful recovery only.
We will start the recovery process immediately after the quote approval and provide you with regular updates as the recovery process transpires. Our engineers will recover all possible data from your device and transfer it to a functional target drive prior to returning it to you. In cases of partial recovery, we ask every client to review the recovered contents before paying for the service, to ensure the result is satisfactory.
If the quoted amount is cost prohibitive, your device will be returned back to you, and no additional costs will apply. The only exception is return shipping for non-local clients.

The cost of data recovery can vary significantly from case to case. There are many factors that can contribute to the cost of recovery, and it is hard to provide an accurate price quote prior to the evaluation. For basic recovery cases, our fees start at $199-, and if the use of advanced recovery tools are required, fees start at $399-. At Capital Data Recovery Inc, we provide a firm, commitment-free price quote upon completion of the evaluation, and the quoted amount is only payable upon successful outcome.

Recovery time depends on the type of a device, its capacity, and the problem. Once your device goes through the evaluation process, you will be provided with an ETA for your recovery project. On average, most recovery cases are completed within 2-5 business days.

Capital Data Recovery Inc has been a trusted data recovery service provider for the Government of Canada since 2004. In order to maintain this relationship, we have established very strict privacy policies. At Capital Data Recovery Inc, we sign a non-disclosure agreement with every customer prior to accepting a project.

Despite our great success rate, we do come across devices that are too severely damaged to be recovered. In cases where your data cannot be recovered, Capital Data Recovery Inc will provide an explanation as to why your data was not recoverable. In addition, you will not be charged a recovery fee.

A short answer - it depends.
Modern SSD drives come with built in TRIM command which is a part of a standard ATA command set. This feature allows an operating system (whether it's a Windows 10 or MacOS) to inform a solid state drive which parts (blocks) of data can be internally wiped. This process kicks in when a user or an operating system deletes the file that is no longer required.
In traditional hard drives containing disk platters, this information stays on the magnetic platters until the de-fragmentation takes place. SSDs de-fragment themselves automatically. This function was mainly introduced to prolong the lifespan of an SSD and provide faster future write operations to the blocks of empty SSD cells.
Linux OS is believed to be the first operating system that handled TRIM commands back in 2008 followed by Microsoft Windows and then MacOS later in 2010.

~$ files are temporary files that are created by Microsoft Office applications (word, excel, power point, etc). When you work on the document, Microsoft word creates a temp file where it saves changes. Once you are done working with that file, it should automatically erase that file. Unfortunately, that does not always happen and we all end up with those files. Most of the time your OS would just hide these files, but since we recovered them all, the attributes of such files were converted from hidden to visible. This is why you see them. These files can be safely deleted as they contain no data.

Capital Data Recovery Inc. supports all types of storage media, manufacturers, file formats and sizes. If you are not sure if your device is supported, simply give us a call or send a quick email, and one of our specialists will provide you with a quick and firm answer.

Capital Data Recovery Inc. is pleased to accept data recovery orders from all around the world. Feel free to submit your case online (INSERT LINK) and ship your media to our main lab.

Once the recovered data is ready to be released, customers are welcome to provide their own storage devices for data transfer. Any USB or SATA interface device with adequate capacity would suffice. Alternatively, we can provide a new USB Flash drive or an external hard drive for an additional charge. If the size of recovered contents is under 10GB, we can upload it to FTP and provide a download link.

We accept payments by VISA, Mastercard, Interac, E-Transfer and certified cheques.

We have answers to all your questions. Just ask.

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