Here's a perfect example that illustrates why we need to charge a small fortune to make professional data recovery worthwhile to do. I get a job in that has bad heads, given it's history I tell them it has low odds of recovery but I'm I'm willing to try changing the heads if they approve my quote and pay for the parts in advance. Which they agreed to.
I order the donor from http://www.donordrives.com, it arrives, initially powers on, ID's etc. so I make a backup of the SA and move it to my clean room for the head swap. I did notice a slightly scratchy sound when it spun down, but I didn't think much of it since the drive was otherwise functioning.
When I open the drive this is what I find:
When it should look like:
What are the odds, that this plastic ramp lasted just long enough to break exactly on the last power down before I open it? So what do I do now? I've already paid ~$150 for the drive, but it damaged the heads so they are useless. I can't go back to the customer to pay again for the parts, since I never even got to try them. And I highly doubt that donordrives.com will refund the drive now that it's already been opened.
So I've now got to eat the cost of another donor drive for a low odds job I'll probably never make any money on. Meaning I'll not only waste my time on the project, I'll be investing my own money into it. :evil: :twisted: :evil:
And then people complain when you quote them $650 for a head swap job, but crap like this is why you have to. I think I'm raising my head swap prices again next year.
I order the donor from http://www.donordrives.com, it arrives, initially powers on, ID's etc. so I make a backup of the SA and move it to my clean room for the head swap. I did notice a slightly scratchy sound when it spun down, but I didn't think much of it since the drive was otherwise functioning.
When I open the drive this is what I find:
When it should look like:
What are the odds, that this plastic ramp lasted just long enough to break exactly on the last power down before I open it? So what do I do now? I've already paid ~$150 for the drive, but it damaged the heads so they are useless. I can't go back to the customer to pay again for the parts, since I never even got to try them. And I highly doubt that donordrives.com will refund the drive now that it's already been opened.
So I've now got to eat the cost of another donor drive for a low odds job I'll probably never make any money on. Meaning I'll not only waste my time on the project, I'll be investing my own money into it. :evil: :twisted: :evil:
And then people complain when you quote them $650 for a head swap job, but crap like this is why you have to. I think I'm raising my head swap prices again next year.
