FOXNews reports on data recovery:
Owners of flood- or fire-damaged computers typically assume their digital tax forms, photos and passwords are unrecoverable. Not necessarily, computer experts say, noting that at least some data can be recovered from virtually any faulty or damaged storage device. And as the computer industry has grown, so has the number of companies doing that restoration work. "We've done data recovery on a laptop that was dropped from a helicopter, on a laptop that had been submerged in the ocean for a year," said Todd Johnson, vice president of operations at Kroll Ontrack Inc., whose engineers helped the MacLennans. "One time there were even bullet holes in the hard drives." Kroll Ontrack is a division of New York-based Kroll Inc., a risk-consulting company whose technology operations announced second-quarter revenue in August of $141 million. As a service to victims of last month's floods in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio and Oklahoma, Kroll Ontrack is waiving some costs and charging them a flat recovery fee of $850, with 10 percent to be donated to the Red Cross. The 20-year-old company, based in Eden Prairie, Minn., is one of several offering similar services and prices, including SalvageData Recovery Lab Inc. in Stamford, Conn., and First Advantage Data Recovery Services in Irving, Texas. The companies charge from $400 to $2,500 for a standard recovery, with the price varying depending on several factors including the proportion of data that can be recovered. Data-recovery companies use proprietary methods to recover data, pulling files into their own environment, where engineers can determine which are salvageable. The recovery process involves digging below the operating system, Johnson said.
