Another lab's quote vs ours.

[lcoughey]

We just completed a project for a client declined a quote from another lab and sent it to us in hopes to get a more affordable price tag.

Here is what the other lab quoted for $800 USD:

* The external ectronic circuity, chips, or other electrical compenents have failed. Proprietary techniques are required to overcome the failure and access the data.
* The file system was structurally damaged preventing access to the data. The file system has been repaired to point to the file data
* The media should be replaced
* Clean Room expertise was required to access the data
* 100% of the files can be recovered

Our quote for $500 CAD (~ $390 USD):

* damaged PCB
* minor media damage (bad sectors that all read after multiple retries)

While the other lab's price isn't as crazy as some, I find it frustrating that they pad their quote with a bunch of fluff in order to make it look like they are doing something proprietary that nobody else in the world knows how to do. And to suggest that clean room expertise was needed was over the top.

This is how this case was done by us:

• ROM read from the patient PCB using a ROM programmer (evidence shows that the other lab physically removed the ROM, which is a common procedure as well)
• Saved ROM writting to a donor PCB (the other lab likely just soldered the patient ROM to the donor PCB, which is also a common procedure)
• Drive powered on and detected with PC3000 and firmware resources backed up as a precaution (in many cases, we might need to repair some firmware modules and possibly disable the drive's self encryption routines)
• Drive imaging done with PC3000 Data Extractor, targeting the sectors with the data. There were a few bad sectors that needed to be read a few times before we got all the data recovered 100%.

No proprietary techniques or clean room expertise were needed to do this project.

I only wish there was a way for us to tap into the market of clients who decline the quotes from labs who charge considerably more than we do.

[webclaw]

It too bad the client didn't ask the company how they determined the FS was damaged in light of the "electrical compenents have failed".

And for $800 you think they could afford spellcheck.

[fzabkar]

What was actually wrong with the PCB? Which model was it?

"Proprietary techniques" to fix a PCB issue sounds like an outright lie. Would you tell me the name of this shop (via PM)? I would hate to mistakenly refer a potential client to them.