PC World warranty - Data Recovery ?

cuscosteff

Hiya - I have a 5 month old External hard drive that has gone faulty. I have just been advised though by PC world that I would have to pay £80-100 if I want the data recovered before the warranty replacement. Am i not covered for data recovery if their equipment is faulty after just a short period of time ?!

wealdroam

cuscosteff wrote: »

Am i not covered for data recovery if their equipment is faulty after just a short period of time ?!

No... but there is no need to pay their recovery fee.

Just use your backup copy of the data.

Johnmcl7

No, the warranty does not cover the data on the drive, only the physical hardware so under the warranty they only need to replace or repair the drive.

John

Fosterdog

cuscosteff wrote: »

Hiya - I have a 5 month old External hard drive that has gone faulty. I have just been advised though by PC world that I would have to pay £80-100 if I want the data recovered before the warranty replacement. Am i not covered for data recovery if their equipment is faulty after just a short period of time ?!

Data backup is your responsibility, you should always have at least two copies of important files preferably with one copy kept offsite to protect from theft and fire as well as accidental deletion and drive failure.

swvillafan

wealdroam wrote: »

No... but there is no need to pay their recovery fee.

Just use your backup copy of the data.

You know he/she wont have one!

Deru

£80-£100 sounds quite reasonable for data recovery. Data recovery Companies charge £500+. I hear PC World Tech Guys can be incompetent and unorganised even to the point of losing your computer and giving you someone else's data (featured on Watchdog) but may depend on whose doing the job at the time.

closed

it sounds far too reasonable

Mobeer

I would want the drive replaced without need to return the original, so that the original drive could be destroyed. No way should personal data be shared with third parties unless they can give assurances as to how the data is handled.

Deru

Depends on how badly the OP wants his/her data back. Worth a stab if that' the case, otherwise, just get a replacement.

Nilrem

Unfortunately as mentioned, data recovery is very very rarely if ever included in a warranty, as the data recovery process can cost hundreds, if not thousands (depending on how important the data is, and how bad the problem with the drive is, it can require some quite highly skilled technicians in clean rooms to dismantle the drive and try to rebuild it*), and there is no way the companies will put themselves on the line for potentially tens of thousands of pounds of warranty work on a 50-150 drive

The price you're getting quoted by PC World sounds far too low to be a proper data recovery job, it sounds like the sort of price they might charge to simply pull the drive out of it's housing, and try transferring the data to another drives- which only works if the drive inside the housing is fine and it's the interface in the housing that is faulty (a job almost anyone who ever played with lego/mechano and has a modicum of basic skills could do - in about 5 minutes to take the drive out and put it in another machine, and the time it takes windows to copy the data).


*The specialist companies that do the work properly can charge thousands of pounds for it at times -because it often takes a lot of time, requires them to keep a stock of spare drives (even a simple fix on a dead drive can require you to pull the drives PCB off and swap it out with one from an identical drive from the same batch, so some data recovery firms have loads of good drives to use for spares), and that's if it's an easyish job, if it's something worse...(I've heard of companies that have very important/expensive data spending tens of thousands on recovery).

macman

It doesn't matter what warranty you have. If the drive fails, then the data may not be recoverable for any amount of money.
Which is why you need to keep a back up, if the data is of value.
No hardware warranty ever covers data loss, because the value of the data is not quantifiable.
As for the idea of trusting DSG to do any kind data recovery procedure, that's just hysterical. Their 'expertise' is usually in the field of wiping your data, whatever the issue.