Data Recovery Service

TG12

Hi All! I'm new to the forums so Hello.
Well I might as well get straight down to business. I'm looking to supplicate my income by starting a personal data recovery service. I have left university a year ago with a Software Engineering Degree I Have a job as a Server Admin. So I have the expertise needed.

The idea is that people would post their memory pens, Digital Camera cards, Hard drives to me and I recover any of the data that they had lost by for example Power failure, A software crash or freeze, Software bugs or poor usability, Data corruption, such as filesystem corruption or database corruption.

I'm looking to charge £45 for the service. This includes recorded delivery return of your item and any data backed up on a CD/DVD.

I am going to aim my service to students. So I was wondering is there anyway that I can contact all the university's in the UK? So they could advertise my service for me? Would anyone know how to do this? Generally what do you think about my idea and if there's anyone that can help me id love to hear from you. Thanks in Advance.

TG12

loaner wrote: »

For hard disks, £45 is too cheap, it can take a long time to recover and burn 10's or 100's of GB's of data. Most commercial companies charge at least £100 just to look at it, going upto £1000's for non-software recovery.

For flash devices, I would imagine most people will google for the many free bits of software to do the same, or pop into PC World who are the experts in this field:rolleyes:

Ive taken on board what your saying. I will be cheaper than PC World but yes your right. I'm also providing a service for those people who don't know how to Google and use some of the tools available . As for been too cheap for hard drives thats true also. I wouldn't recover the whole hard drive just any Photos, Documents etc etc that people needed.

TG12

loaner wrote: »

For hard disks, £45 is too cheap, it can take a long time to recover and burn 10's or 100's of GB's of data. Most commercial companies charge at least £100 just to look at it, going upto £1000's for non-software recovery.

For flash devices, I would imagine most people will google for the many free bits of software to do the same, or pop into PC World who are the experts in this field:rolleyes:

So I think it may be an uphill struggle to get customers, unless you can manage to get to the top of the Google rankings. The market is pretty crowded. You could try contacting student unions.

Yeah thats what I'm going to do.

TG12

loaner wrote: »

To make it worthwhile at those rates, you'll only be able to do the simpler jobs (filesystem corruption with a few important files, or flash drives). The problem is the average consumer with a dead hard disk will expect a little more, especially these days when people store 100's of GB of music/video/photo's on their PC's.

Realistic rates for the time involved will scare many people off, so it may prove difficult to get off the ground.

Good luck.

Thanks but if you think about it this way. A few personal documents/pictures etc it would be worthwhile the 45 pound. If its music, videos and stuff its nothing they cant/wont download again. I doubt you would get people asking PC world to recover the latest episode of Benidorm they have downloaded lol So if this was you. How much would you charge??

TG12

loaner wrote: »

If you want to do this as a legit commercial proposition, including tax etc, then £45 is reasonable (£30/hour or so) for a simple flash drive job, and one DVD. But if you are unable to get anything off it, which will happen, you may end up spending time and possibly money for no gain.

Hard disks are a different proposition for the reasons I mentioned (Not necessarily Benidorm, but the volume of what people class as important data is growing rapidly). , You'd probably earn more per hour in a fast food outlet.

You'll get dead electronics, crashed platters, corrupt file systems, unreadable area's, overheating, so you will have to either have a no data no fee policy, or charge for your time regardless. I have done it, and earned little (money or gratitude) for the time spent. There is a limit to what the average student or customer will pay which you have to balance against doing your best to get that important data back, and having a good reputation. It's the same as PC support, people don't want to pay much for your time, because they think it is easy and unskilled, (everyone has a PC).

Yeah my idea was going to be No Fix No fee.
Yeah everyone has a PC and some people shouldn't be allowed them!! but thats another rant for another time lol. Whats your story then? Did you make much money? I'm going to go ahead with it I think, I mean theres loads of saying that equate to Nothing ventured nothing gained. I'm going to target Average Joe users who don't have a clue about PC usage as they would rather pay someone to fix their problems just in the same way we would pay a mechanic to fix our car . . .

Chollita

Rather than specialising, what about aiming a general service at the computer numpties? Setting up PCs (even I managed that, but there may be some who can't), teaching one-on-one how to use a PC, or a phone or email advice on problems or what to purchase (you'd have to work out how to charge for that, maybe a subscription service?) etc.