My hard drive crashed! I lost my data, Word documents, and pictures. Can you get my data back?
This is something of how my calls for help usually go. The short answer is “yes,” most probably. It depends on who you talk to in the data recovery and computer forensics business, but the recovery rate is probably over 90%. Now this is including software and hardware recovery techniques.
Now what I am calling hardware recovery, is that the drive itself has stopped functioning reliably or at all. This can be a mechanical failure, such as the motor that makes the disk spin has stopped working. A key symptom of a mechanical failure is the drive making strange noises. Loud clicking, up and down loud humming, or a grinding sound. If your drive is making a grinding sound….that is REAL bad. If you want ANY chance of getting your data back, pull the power and seek professional help!
As a consumer, you are usually not real interested in my detailed description of what I believe the cause of the problem or failure is….. As my wife will say when she has a computer problem, “Just make it WORKKKK!” Oh yeah….banging on your keyboard and hitting the computer generally doesn’t solve your problem either. 
Of course the other thing the consumer wants to know is, how much will it cost? This is a reasonable question. As a person or a business you have to make a decision of whether or not your data is worth that much money to get back. Data Recovery is a new enough field that I can’t give you a great answer on how much you should pay. I will give you some guidelines and thoughts.
If you are the average consumer, no RAID drive configuration and you data is not in some super encryption format, it should be a pretty standard cost. Whoever is doing the work should be able to give you a rate on how much they will charge. For a software only recovery, you should pay between $150 and $400 dollars. If it is a mechanical failure it is a lot more specialized repair, requiring more equipment. A ball park price should be $500 to $1400 dollars. I realize that last one is a real wide range, but so are the prices companies charge for those kinds of repairs.
I hope you are never in the position to have to read this article for more that personal knowledge enrichment!
I am based in Gainesville, Florida and can be reached by phone or email for individual advice. http:www.datatriangle.com/services
