If you perform even a brief search for data recovery software, you will see thousands of returns offering hundred of products at no cost. With all of these options, how can Dave’s Computers charge for data recovery? Why don’t we just use these free programs?
There are some very good reasons why not all free data recovery software is worth using.
Limited data recovery
Many free programs will offer to recover a finite amount of data before charging you for the full product. That’s fine if you only lost a few files but not so good if you lost an entire drive. You are then almost held to ransom to pay up to $60 for a program you will very rarely use.
Limited options
These programs can be useful if you have deleted or overwritten data but not a lot else. If you have a faulty hard drive, your drive is making funny noises or won’t read the disk, they won’t help. In fact, they could make things worse. Data recovery depends on the data not being overwritten. Once overwritten it is very difficult to recover. Any failed attempts could render that data useless.
If your computer won’t boot
If hard drive failure or critical data loss is preventing your computer from booting normally, no free data recovery program is going to help. You will need to either rebuild your operating system and say goodbye to the data or bring it to Dave’s Computers for professional data recovery.
It won’t fix the underlying cause
If your troubles are being caused by overheating, malware, corrupted operating system, program that deletes files or something else, a data recovery program may be able to fix the symptoms but not the cause. Only a computer expert is going to be able to identify the root cause of an issue as well as recover your data.
You are the product
There’s a saying in the industry, ‘if a product is free, you are the product’. This generally means that if a product is provided free, there is a different type of cost involved. That could be data collection, profiling, endless nags to update or upgrade to premium or some other cost. There is a lot of good free software out there but there is also a lot of not-so good free software out there. Telling the difference isn’t always easy.
If you do suffer data loss and value that data, you are much better off using a professional. Dave’s Computers in New Jersey have a team of data recovery experts who are more than willing to help. Help us help you and don’t do anything until we inspect your drive!
