FAQ

When you purchase a second copy of your recovered data, you will receive 2 copies of your recovered data. It's important to note that the type of storage media device you will receive will not be a replacement for your original device. We will send you the recovered data on a storage device that will have enough capacity to hold your recovered data.

As long as you have the password for the encrypted drive, we will be able to access the drive to recover the data.  Unfortunately, without the password, we cannot access the data.

Please do not include the password for the encrypted drive in the package you send to us.  You can communicate the password to us either on the submission form or email it to us separately at info@atpdataservices, along with your case information.

Once we recover your data, we will ship it back to you on an encrypted USB drive.  We will communicate the password of the drive to you via email.  You will be able to reset the drive's password once you receive it.

You may not receive a USB drive that is the same size as the drive you sent in. For example, if you send in a 4TB drive but only 1.5TB of files are recovered, we’ll return your data on a 2TB encrypted drive. It’s important to note that we don’t return system files, applications, or operating system data, as these are often corrupted or unnecessary. The returned drive will not function as a bootable system or a replacement for your original device. Our services are designed to give you secure access to your recovered files, including documents, photos, videos, and other personal content.

Please allow 5-10 business days for refunds to be processed.

We will notify you of the outcome of your recovery. If we successfully recover the data, we will provide tracking information for the package containing your HDD or Flash drive. You will also receive separate communication containing a password for your recovered data, so in the event the recovered data in lost in transit or stolen, it is protected. In the event we are unsuccessful, we will also notify you of the outcome and provide tracking information for the package containing your original media (unless secure destruction is requested).. Additionally, a full refund of our fees (minus non-refundable fees outlined in the quote) will be processed to the payment method used to pay for the service.

Hard disk drives (HDDs) store data on spinning platters. Mechanical failures such as scratches, corrosion, or physical damage to these platters can render the data unrecoverable. If the damage is severe enough, it may not be possible to read the data from anywhere on the platter.  In addition, a head crash occurs when the read/write heads of an HDD make physical contact with the platters. This can lead to damage to both the heads and the platters, making data recovery impossible. The severity of the head crash influences the chances of successful recovery.  While mechanical failures in storage devices are common reasons for data loss, non-mechanical issues can also pose challenges to successful data recovery. There are numerous non-mechanical reasons why data recovery might not be successful:

If new data has been written to a storage device after it has been deleted or made inaccessible, it can overwrite the sectors containing the lost data.

If data loss resulted from file corruption rather than deletion, this also means certain sections of the data were overwritten by incorrect data.  Data corruption can occur due to software issues, power outages, unstable write heads, or other non-mechanical factor

Encrypted data adds an extra layer of complexity to the recovery process. If the data is encrypted, the recovery service needs access to the correct encryption keys to decrypt and recover the files. Here too, corruption might damage certain areas on the device needed to correctly decrypt data.

Damage to the file system structure, for example, the master file table (MFT) on NTFS file systems, can make it difficult or impossible to locate and recover files.  This is especially true for heavily fragmented files.

Problems with the firmware of a storage device can impede the data recovery process. Firmware issues may prevent the drive from functioning correctly or cause it to misinterpret the data, leading to difficulties in accessing and recovering the lost files.

For flash based storage devices such as solid state drives (SSDs), SD cards, or portable USB drives, physical damage to the storage chips such as cracked or severely overheated chips will sever its extremely small, internal connections. After the manufacturing process, it is no longer possible to access these electrical connections, making the data unrecoverable.

For your data recovery scenario, we used special software to regain access to your files. This happens when important file structure data is damaged due to physical damage or corruption. Our software separates the files it finds into two folders, one called "ROOT" and the other called "EXTRA FOUND FILES". The "ROOT" folder will have some data that may have original file names and a folder structure that is intact. These files were likely recovered from areas of your disk that weren’t damaged.  The "EXTRA FOUND FILES" folder will have several folders within it consisting of fragments of file structure that could be retrieved, or file types with files that were found without any structure whatsoever. The results you get from your recovered data are the best possible outcome given the severity of the device failure. Some files will have the original names, but most will not. There is also a good chance our software found “false positives” where the software might have thought it found a file, but it did not. These files will not work, or will only partially work due to damage (for example only the top half of a photo will open as the lower half had damages)

Please email us at info@atpdataservices.com.  You can expect a reply from us within 72 hours.