Frequently Asked Questions

Data Recovery is the process of obtaining usable data from inaccessible or corrupted storage media. ATP does not repair your damaged device. Our proprietary recovery process is able to extract data from the damaged device and copy your recovered files to a new USB External HDD protected by a unique password for safe return to you.

Making the right decision starts with getting the best information - It is impossible to diagnose your issue without testing the device so our service is based on an "evaluate and quote" model so you can decide on the best course of action for your situation.

Detailed and Professional Evaluation Reports
For $99 you will receive our customized evaluation and recoverability report regarding your case. Our in-depth reports are composed by experienced recovery engineers with decades of experience in data loss on all brands and all formats of storage media. We will determine include root cause behind your data loss, the recoverability of your data and our specific plan for your recovery case. Evaluation reports are typically available 3-5 business days from receipt of media in our lab.

Firm and Transparent Price Quotes - No Games
Also included with our evaluation is a quote for service. Our quotes are firm and will not change during or after the recovery process. We’ll never surprise you with tricks or hidden fees and every quote includes our Customer Promise. You will have an estimated date of completion of our recovery work and an honest assessment for the expectation of successful recovery of your data. Our quotes also include an estimate of how much data we expect to recover. We call all of these elements of this service our Customer Promise and if we fail to meet our promise, we will issue a refund of your recovery fees as documented in the price quote terms.

All quotes include a 10% discount on recovery fees for Seagate customers. The 10% discount is applied to the cost of your recovery fees automatically and highlighted as a line item in your quote; you do not need a promotional code or to ask for the discount.

Our recovery fees range from $200 - $1000 depending on the type of device, estimated time to complete recovery and severity of the damage. Most quotes range from $600 - $800 including recovery fees. Recovery fees are fully refundable if we are unsuccessful in recovering your data per the terms of the quote. If your recovery requires replacement parts, the cost of those parts will be added to the quote as a separate line item. Parts costs are non-refundable. Additionally, our service includes a new USB External HDD for the return of your data included in our price, and we pay shipping for the return of all recovered data.

We do offer financing options to help those on a tight budget. PayPal’s “Buy Now Pay Later” offers several term options for you to consider. Here is additional information regarding this service.

https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/ways-to-pay/buy-now-pay-later

Please go to the following link to receive information on our recovery process, and instructions on how to submit your device to our lab for recovery. Additional information is included in our FAQs to help with any additional questions you may have regarding our service. 

atpdataservices.com/seagate 
https://www.atpdataservices.com/faq
NOTE: Please pre-pay customs when making shipping arrangements. We will not accept shipments with unpaid tariffs.

Making the right decision starts with getting the best information - Our service is based on an "evaluate and quote" model so you can decide on the best course of action for your situation.

For $99 you will receive our customized evaluation and recoverability report regarding your case. Our in-depth reports are composed by experienced recovery engineers with decades of experience in data loss on all brands and all formats of storage media but are experts in Seagate HDDs.

Our reports will determine and document the root cause behind your data loss, the recoverability of your data and our specific plan for your recovery case. Evaluation reports are typically available 3-5 business days from receipt of media in our lab.

Included with our Evaluation and Recoverability Report is a quote for service. Our price quotes will not change during or after the recovery process. We’ll never surprise you with tricks or hidden fees and every quote includes our customer promise for date of completion and an honest assessment for the expectation of recovery of your data. We call this our customer promise and if we fail to meet our promise, we will issue a full refund our recovery fees.

All quotes also include a 10% discount on recovery fees for Seagate customers. The 10% discount is applied to the cost of your recovery fees automatically and highlighted as a line item in your quote; you do not need a promotional code or to ask for the discount. – No discount is offered on replacement parts or the Evaluation and Recoverability Report.

Our reports include a full diagnostic and visual inspections of all critical areas of the device. We examine all hardware and software subsystems and provide a comprehensive report that includes a recoverability assessment and firm quote for service.

There are occasions when damage to the data is permanent and a complete recovery is not possible. However, it is rare that absolutely no data is retrievable. Our expert team can usually recover some of the data even in extreme conditions.

Be aware that no utility can make an informed decision about what to save and what to overwrite. The user of the software must apply some experience and judgment.

Never use a repair utility program unless it allows you to save an "undo" file of the repairs it makes. Include the undo file if you later send the drive to us.

Most importantly, do not format the drive or change the partitions. Either action can result in permanent loss of your data.

If your drive makes any unusual noises, do not attempt to use any type of utility software. Clicking, buzzing, scraping and other metallic noises may be indicative of mechanical failure. Shut down the computer to avoid further damage to the drive and its data. Send your drive to us for professional recovery in our clean room environment.

To maximize your chances of a successful data recovery, it is important to protect your media during shipment because device components are very delicate. Any potential mishandling of the hardware could cause further damage to the media. If you have access to non-static wrapping material, it would be best. However, all media should be wrapped in bubble wrap or foam and placed in a box that is twice the size of your media. The shipping box should have enough room for both the media and the packing material that allows for NO movement while in transit.

Please note that if you are sending us an internal hard disk drive, be sure to remove it from the laptop or desktop computer case before shipping it to us. 
For smaller items such as flash media cards, USB drives and smartphones, please place it in an envelope before wrapping it and placing it in the shipping box. 
Do NOT include power supplies or other accessories for your device as we do not need them for the recovery process. Please do not include the power supply, cables or accessories when you ship your storage media to us for recovery. These items will not be returned to you if you do. 
When shipping multiple drives to us, we recommend packaging each drive in its own box or to make sure each drive is separated with packing material so that there is no contact between each drive when they are packed in the same large box.

Our preferred shipping partner is USPS but you are free to use any carrier of your choice. We accept shipments from ALL carriers.

Print a copy of your evaluation confirmation email and include it with your shipment. Send it to the following address:

ATP DATA SERVICES
 611 Hundred Oaks Drive
 Suite 140
 Edmond, OK 73013

Once we receive your media, our team will immediately start working on your case to determine the extent of the damage. We may or may not determine the root cause of the failure. We do not attempt to fix the drive, but we will assess the amount of work or parts involved to get the drive working well enough to read the data.

We strive to have the evaluations completed within 3-5 business days from receipt of the drive. We will contact you with our evaluation results when the evaluation is complete.

Your Media Evaluation and Recoverability Report contains the estimated time for completion of your recovery. Recovery efforts begin within 24 business hours of your paid invoice. When the recovery attempt is complete you will receive an email with the outcome of the recovery and information regarding the shipment of your original media and any recovered data. That email will also contain the password for the drive with your recovered data and other important information regarding your case.

Your quote is good for 30 calendar days from the date of your report. If you decide to decline the quote; the evaluation report is yours to keep. If we have not received a response regarding your case after 60 days, we will consider the case abandoned and it will be securely destroyed.

Our recovery fees range from $400 - $1000 depending on the type of device and severity of the damage to your device. Most quotes include recovery fees between $400-$600 for HDDs (including the Seagate discount). Recovery fees are fully refundable if we are unsuccessful in recovering your data per the terms of the quote. If your recovery requires replacement parts, the cost of those parts will be added to the quote as a separate line item. Parts costs are non-refundable.

The greatest share of the data recovery cost is labor. Other costs sometimes enter into the calculation, too, such as replacement parts and equipment costs. Your cost will depend on the type of storage device that has failed, the nature of that failure and how many hours are required to rebuild the data.

In circumstances we recover data but do not meet the terms of the quote for recovery success, we will offer you the data we were able to recover at a discount from the quoted amount. Along with VeriScan results and our revised quote offer you can decide if you wish to receive a refund or accept the discounted data recovery results.

We do offer financing options to help those on a tight budget. Shop pay as well as PayPal’s “Buy Now Pay Later” offers several term options for you to consider. Here is additional information regarding this service.

https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/ways-to-pay/buy-now-pay-later

Included with our Evaluation and Recoverability Report is a quote for service. Our price quotes are firm and will not change during or after the recovery process. We’ll never surprise you with tricks or hidden fees and every quote includes our customer promise for date of completion and an honest assessment for the expectation of recovery of your data. We call this our customer promise and if we fail to meet our promise, we will issue a full refund our recovery fees. Our VeriScan technology provides details regarding your recovery to support our Customer Promise.

ATP uses proprietary software called VeriScan that allows our customers to review the results of their recovery. VeriScan provides statistical analysis of our recovery results. This tool provides verification of our results as outlined in the Customer Promise included in every Evaluation and Recoverability Report. VeriScan reports show “Good” files and “Bad” files in our recovery results in a browsable format like Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. The report highlights “Bad” files in red and provides a total file count and other file statistics tracked in an easy-to-read format. VeriScan ensures you have a clear, honest understanding of the reliability of the results of our recovery. VeriScan is simply another way ATP provides peace of mind by providing fully transparent results of the recovery of your data. (Sample VeriScan results)

ATP provides a proprietary software solution that allows our customers to see the results of our recovery attempt. VeriScan provides verification of our recovery results to support the Customer Promise included in every Evaluation and Recoverability Report and quote for service. VeriScan reports show “Good” files and “Bad” files in our recovery results in a browsable format similar to Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. The VeriScan report shows files recovered with “Bad” files marked in red with file count and size statistics tracked at the bottom.

With VeriScan, a file marked as “Bad” means we detected read errors in that file during imaging. More specifically, this means that part of the file was stored in an area of the drive affected uncorrectable errors or was even physically damaged, preventing us from reading the original data completely. In some cases, the damage may be minor, and a file marked as “Bad” may still open or appear mostly intact.

However, to provide the most accurate and transparent results, we use a strict good/bad methodology rather than relying on whether a file happens to open. A “Bad” designation reflects confirmed read errors at the storage level and a “Good” file is certified as being error free and fully recovered with no errors. VeriScan ensures you have a clear, honest understanding of the file’s reliability and the results of our recovery. VeriScan is simply another way ATP provides peace of mind by providing fully transparent results of the recovery of your data.

Our price quote includes a new USB External HDD for the return of your recovered data. The capacity/size of the return drive will be the discretion of ATP Data Services and determined based on the size of the data recovered. ATP uses USPS Priority Mail shipping for the return of all recovered data.

Yes, we return your device regardless of outcome in the recovery attempt or post evaluation if no recovery attempt is made. We also offer a secure and safe destruction service at no additional cost, if you prefer. We can produce a certificate of destruction that includes photos of the destroyed device(s), upon request.

Should you choose to decline our quote for service we will return your original media to you. ATP pays for return shipping. We also offer a secure and safe destruction service at no additional cost, if you prefer. We can produce a certificate of destruction that includes photos of the destroyed device(s), upon request.

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.

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.

Windows
Unlocking a password-locked USB drive in Windows is easy, assuming the drive has been encrypted using BitLocker, Microsoft’s encryption tool included with Microsoft Windows versions starting with Windows Vista.

How to unlock a flash drive encrypted using BitLocker:
Insert the drive into a USB port on your PC.
Open the Start menu and type “control panel.”
Launch the classic Control Panel and navigate to System and Security → BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Select the encrypted flash drive and click the Unlock drive option.
Enter your password and confirm.

MacOS
macOS comes with a native disk encryption program called FileVault. If you need to recover files from a USB drive that has been encrypted with it, then you need to enter your password first to unlock it. The good news is that it won’t take you more than a minute to do so.

How to unlock a password-protected USB drive using FileVault:
Insert the drive into a USB port on your Mac.
Launch Finder and right-click your USB drive.
Select the Decrypt option.
Enter your password

Yes, our customers have several options regarding encrypted data. 1) the customer may provide ATP with the password so that we may verify results at the end of the recovery process OR 2) ATP will recover the data in an encrypted format and the customer can access the recovered files using their password after we have returned the recovery to the address on file. Yet another we offer security for our customer’s precious data.

Operating systems use a file system to store metadata and track which portion of the disk is used and which is empty. Windows defaults to the NTFS (New Technology File System) file system but has also created FAT, ExFAT, and ReFS file systems. Apple defaults to APFS (Apple File System) currently but has created and used HFS+. Each file system handles data differently but uses the same core concepts. There is a file table that keeps and maintains all information about the file. This is the Master File Table on Windows and the Catalog on Mac. Information kept includes the files name, folder location, time stamps, permissions and most importantly the location of the data belonging to that file.

Data recovery primarily focuses on imaging data from a broken or malfunctioning device to a reliable disk. In some cases, unreadable sectors are encountered during imaging. We attempt to reread them in different modes but sometimes they just will not read. These read errors can be located where the filesystem is stored. Every error in the file system leads to between 1 and 4 files losing their attribute(s) and location information. Many read errors in the file system leads to not only many files not being listed and located but it breaks the folder structure too. Part of a folder chain can be orphaned from the root directory, so the file system no longer know where it belongs. Some recovery cases have most, or all of the file system stored on that damaged surface meaning most or all of the file structure and file names are now lost.

Recoveries including raw files are not ideal but are the only way to recover these orphaned files. We do our best to organize these files to make them easier to locate and browse. Fully orphaned files with no reference in the file table are sorted by file type. This structure would for example be “Extra Found FilesGraphics and PicturesJPEG Digital Camera000023.jpg” The top level or root folder “Extra Found Files” refers to the contents being made up of fully orphaned files with no reference in the file system on the drive. Graphics and Pictures organizes these orphaned files into categories. Other categories include Archive, Documents, Spreadsheets, Audio, and Video. Within those category folders you find folders for each extension under that category. The folder “JPEG Digital Camera” has all jpg files that have camera metadata in the file. This is the most useful way we can find to organize these files to make them easier to browse and digest.

In other cases, there is partial folder structure information, and the file metadata is preserved. This is ideal because the file location is known and its name. These will also appear under Extra Found Files. Since the folder chain is disconnected from the root or base folder, it is placed under Extra Found Files but in its own folder chain instead of a file category. These can also be challenging because it is hard to know where the file came from. This is the best result in the circumstances because it will be a complete file due to the full location on the disk being known. It is easier to sort because the names, dates, and other attributes were preserved. The combination of orphaned files and broken folder structure is expected for a recovery with a high amount of read errors. We avoid raw results, when possible, but it is critical to present all of the data recovered and let you decide what data you wish to keep.

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 another 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.

We will happily issue a refund for your recovery fees if you are not happy with the recovery results for any reason. Our policy requires you to notify us within 30 days of completion of your recovery and return our equipment (undamaged) containing your recovered files.

After returning our equipment undamaged, we will review the data logs on the drive. If the recovered files weren't copied or moved to another device, we will issue a full refund of your recovery fees.

No refund will be issued for any “non-refundable” items as highlighted in your approved quote or for recovered data older than 30 days. In the event the recovered files were copied from our equipment no refund will be issued.