EssentialdatarecoveryReviews 

I have or had external drive with 15 years of work data on it, unfortunately I left too long to transfer and update.
The bitocker protection caused issues as well.
My employer would not assist (although happy to benefit with what on the drive) had been quote £700-£1000 to have it resolved (not 100% guaranteed).
Tom from EDR quoted what I believed to be a reasonable sub £500 with new drive or nothing except postage if it could not be fixed.
Can't tell you how relieved and happy I am not only with the turnaround time but the service a net result, can't believe I am bouncing about an external drive working but there you go.
The vagaries of IT hardware and their idiosyncrasies 'often result in a failure to resolve.
For me it's been nothing but a success.
Essential Data Services therefore get the 5 stars.

If your drive has a hardware or mechanical failure these guys cannot help you. But they did not allude to this when I contacted them on two occasions, first initially by their web contact form and then by telephone. I even discussed with Sarah the symptoms of my drive failure and told her I'd already used disk warrior and OS Disk Utility to retrieve my data to no avail. I thus ended up wasting time and money on postage for them to tell me something I already knew. Return postage cost them £6.50 but they charged me £12.00 when they told me they would charge me £10.00. I tried to leave a review on their website but the anti spam generator doesn't work. Not to be trusted.

Edit: I've since spoken to Sarah about the return postage, turns out it was £10+VAT but she was kind enough to refund the VAT.

I was taken in by their cheap headline fee. All the investigation work ended up costing me about £200 just to tell me this -

Please find below the outcome from the Clean Room Diagnostics. I am sorry to say the drive is in a very bad way.

The drive will require a headstack replacement:

Donor Parts £80.00 (Non refundable)
Clean room works £385.00 (Non refundable)
Data recovery £120.00 (100% no data no fee)

Total £585.00 +vat

Please note: The platters appear to have damage caused by contact from the damaged heads reducing the chances of a successful recovery to 50/50 at best.

I gave up after that and thought it was a lost cause. But about 6 months later I ended up in a relationship with a guy that owned a data recovery company. I had him look at it.

There was nothing wrong with the heads, it didn't need a clean room. The motherboard was faulty. He said it was the most common issue and the easiest to recover from, it's the first step they do at his company in diagnosing the problem. He recovered all my data.

This job should have cost me no more than 120 for data recovery and 80 for the motherboard plus vat.

This company is either incompetent or cowboys. I think the latter.

Avoid.

DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTING.

* UPDATE *

Total failure by Essential Data Recovery.

Sent the hard-drive to SEAGATE recovery services which recovered all the data.

So disappointed and totally let down by Essential Data Recovery. Would definitely not recommend to anyone. Do not believe any of their sales techniques.

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Watch out for significant "Non-refundable costs"

Unfortunately I have been a victim from one of the many cheap data recovery sales techniques in the UK. Essential Data Recovery provided me an attractive cheap quotation in advance of receiving the drive, making claims that nearly all data recovery work will cost £120 + VAT in my case.

However, on receipt of the device the quotation will increase significantly, and in my case I was charged £504 incl VAT (to be fair Sarah informed and asked me authorize work each time). All of these for a significant non-refundable fee ahead of performing any work, despite having advertised ‘no-fix, no-fee recovery’ terms. In the end they sent back the drive, having failed to recover any data and keeping the non-refundable fees.

Before choosing any data recovery service, make sure you ask for the non-refundable costs.

I have learned an expensive mistake. Please do not make the same mistake as I did.Trust is so important when you send a hard drive with all your photo and unfortunately I have been let down by Essential Data Recovery on the basis that I had been led to believe the cheap and low quote when I searched for a reliable data recovery service.

There exists a number of companies that offers 100% no non-refundable charges. This is where we need to use if you want to avoid paying for service when no data can be recovered.