Data Recovery Man

Was very dismayed when my computer crashed. Data Recovery Man had the most reasonable price for data recovery and to upgrade my system. ALL of my files were recovered and I was thrilled! I would highly recommend them.

My Lacie external hard drive had a hardware malfunction and I am so happy I found the Data Recovery Man. Other companies quoted me way more than Simon did. My device was a Level 3 recovery and cost $ 999. It sucked having to pay so much, but the data I needed recovered was priceless. I’ve learned my lesson! Back up everything! Simon was able to recover 100% of my data. So thankful.

I accidentally deleted an entire vacations worth of pictures when my computer decided my SD card wasn’t formatted properly. In just a few days, Simon was able to review the drive and find over 1,900 pictures in good quality — which was everything I was looking for and then some! Process was smooth and they were very easy to work with. Definitely recommend them if you’re ever in my situation.

Totally amazing! My SD card crashed, and took nearly 16 gig of memories with it. It was late when I was trying to download some (zillion) photos and videos when all of a sudden, my files began acting strange. Long story short, my memory card was unreadable. I found Simon and called him first thing the next morning (in a blind panic). Reading advice online did nothing but make me want to throw up. I was terrified this card was a lost cause and I would be out so many precious memories. Simon answered the phone himself and was very reassuring, but realistically so. He told me to bring the card down and he would see what he could do. Within HOURS he called me and was able to get ALL of my images and videos off of the card. He explained everything in «non-​tech lingo,» and said that sometimes, SD cards just «go bad.» But even so, he was able to rescue all of the data. He charged me just $ 225 and that included a flash drive with all of my images loaded on to it. I had everything back within 24 hours. Many places online that I researched were charging per image for recovery, or taking 6+ weeks to finish the job. Simon was extremely nice, very knowledgable and the front desk staff was very friendly. I can’t tell you how pleased I was that this story ended on a positive note. I am now backing up my photos weekly, and not maxing my SD cards to the limit. Thanks Simon! (A quick PS: The parking by his office is paid, so if you have to wait longer than 15 minutes, make sure you have a few dollars to pay the attendant.)

Simon went above and beyond to help me recover my lost data. I never had a problem with the receptionists and I was there a handful of times. Simon broke down the issue and had patience with me as I had him scan through multiple different memory cards. I was holding out hope and he was hopeful along with me. I would recommend him to anyone that is in a bind. Hoping I don’t have to return to him, but if I have another problem I will go back to Simon no question!

I’m writing this review from my restored laptop, with all data restored, thanks to the Data Recovery Man. After both my laptop and external hard drive (that I had used to back-​up my laptop data) failed simultaneously, I found myself in need of data recovery services. Initially I went to Geek Squad at Best Buy and was dismayed to learn that they needed to send my device offsite for several weeks and at least $ 550, with no guarantee that they could recover my valuable data. I’m so glad I sought a second opinion and found Data Recovery Man! Simon took my semi-​panicked weekend call and brought me A LOT of reassurance about the prospects for data recovery. I brought my device in the following Monday and by Friday I had my laptop back, with the precious data restored, a new hard drive, and additional RAM to power the new hard drive. Throughout, Simon and his team were courteous, responsive and patient with all my questions, and upfront about pricing. He evaluated both my laptop hard disk and external hard drive for free, which was a welcome surprise considering that Best Buy’s intro evaluation for 1 device was $ 100.00. If you are in the unfortunate situation of needing data recovery, look no further! Simon and his team are competent, capable, and honest – they’re the best!

So my hard drive crashes on my desktop PC in the middle of putting together my 2015 taxes! Cold sweat and chills all over my body… Yes, (finger pointing at my face), I was one of THOSE guys…“who needs to back-​up files??, this computer is only two years old!” Well, all of a sudden, I needed help. Taxes, important business documents, lots of pictures, etc!!!
After going to the computer store and getting a DIY fix which, btw, did nothing but take some $ out of my wallet, I asked same store’s service department how much to fix… opening line was $ 1700, plus repairs (note:$ 1700 was for the clean room!!!). I called my IT guy at work and he said to just write it up to experience and move on.
Soooo, I hopped on another computer and searched Unilocal,and that is what lead me to Data Recovery Man, and Simon. I gave them a call, left a message, and Simon personally phoned me back in a couple of hours. I answered the questions he asked, and he broke things down to a 3-​tiered schedule of fees, from least costly to most, depending on what had to be done. He thoroughly explained the possibilities and said he would be able to let me know exact costs within 24 – 48 hours of inspecting the drive. I dropped the drive off the next day. True to his word, Simon called me within 48 hours with a price to retrieve all of the data and put it on a new drive. The price was under $ 400!!! I told him to please go ahead, and I picked up the new drive with all the transferred information, and my old dead drive in a couple of days.
I am so impressed by the service and costs that I am telling everyone I know that Data Recovery Man, and Simon is the place to go when the unexpected occurs. Great service, honest pricing, stellar customer service.
I also have to add that every time I went to the DRM office (perhaps 3 occasions), the receptionists were friendly, attentive, and very helpful.
5 Big Stars here

In short (or not so short) …my sister, who lives on a remote Island in Alaska, lost 600 pictures from a once in a lifetime trip our parents (around 80 years old) had arranged for their entire offspring. She thought all was lost, however, being in the OC, I started calling around after googling «lost data». Simon, «The Recovery Data» man, was referred by a company in Irvine who said they would charge $$$$… And even then wouldn’t take the job.
I called Simon. Simon (himself) spoke with me on the phone and after hearing our story predicted optimistic possibilities. A full month later I called; again, Simon, himself spoke with me on the phone with the same professionalism;encouragement. I personally delivered the media to his clean, beautiful office. Simon, himself, greeted, handled the transaction.
All photos restored. 24 hours later. (Did I mention, very reasonable price?)
Oh, and he followed up with an email. Yup. Customer service… right?
Simon rocks.

I had an external drive with nearly 1TB of photos, videos and music that suddenly failed. Brought it in on a Monday and data was recovered and transferred to new drives and ready for me to pick up by Thursday. Excellent communication by Simon through the whole process, from daily progress updates, to my various options, to answering questions after the fact. He even offered good suggestions on how I could avoid needing his services in the future! Data recovery isn’t cheap, but family photos are priceless and I’m happy to have them back.

Simon is the best! He is knowledgable, honest, professional, and straight forward — exactly what I needed when my computer crashed with my entire business was lost. He got everything back and restored my machine back to working function for a reasonable exchange of energy. I am grateful to him and so happy to know that he is out there should I have any other issues. Thanks Simon!!!

I so want to give this place the full five-​star review, but one nagging issue is going to prevent me from doing so.
Edit: Simon contacted me and has given me assurance the issues outlined below are being addressed asap. Again, killing it in customer service. So for that, I’m bumping this up to the 5 stars it deserves.
My hard drive died — unexpectedly, as they all do. On it, I had over 250GB of music, photos, documents, etc. And wouldn’t you know it, but my backup drive sucked so bad at doing its job that none of my data was recoverable. So I gritted my teeth and called these guys, preparing for the worst.
Simon answered my plea and gave me a quote on service — but it was higher than I had expected. When I told him so, he agreed to knock it down to a number more in line with what I thought. He didn’t have to do that and I still appreciate him making the effort to secure me as a customer. I was to drop off my drive at their offices and the data would be (hopefully) fully recovered within a few days. This was a huge relief.
Now for the problem: the girl working at the front desk. Even upon walking in, with me unsure of what the process was, she had attitude. I could feel it emanating from her. When I asked if it was possible to explain my needs to a repair person, she said «If you need to talk to anyone right now it’s going to be a $ 95 rush-​job fee». But she said it with the sort of tone that really said «Hurry up and get out of here so I can go back to browsing Facebook», or whatever she was up to. I left. Problem to be continued…
I returned a few days later, retrieved my data on a loaner HDD, and took it home to upload onto my new HDD. After that had been done, I asked my gf to return the drive since she works across the street from their offices.
When she went up to drop it off the woman at the front (the same one?) told her to fill out a form. When she asked why the girl tersely said «everyone has to». So my gf started filling it out but stopped halfway, asking again what this was for. The girl at the front said — and I quote — «You fill out the boxes with the info it’s asking for, what’s so hard about that?» Attitude much? My gf said the entire time the girl was busy talking with someone else near her desk. When my gf finally said «All I’m doing is dropping this off. The data recovery was already done», the woman said «Oh, ok», took the drive and let her go. I then got at least seven texts from my gf, going off on how incredibly rude the receptionist was to her.
The technicians here did a wonderful job recovering my valuable data, and Simon was utterly fantastic in his approach to a potential customer… but that girl at the front desk sucks. And unfortunately for this business she’s the first point of contact for anyone entering the offices.

Simon is great but the receptionist seem annoyed helping. Let me rewind. I had an SSD harddrive crash and found Simon on Unilocal.I gave him a shot and I dig him. He tries to breakdown the issue and answer questions as best as he can. I spoke with him twice on the phone.
Although the harddrive couldn’t be saved bc the model was too new and he didn’t have the needed parts, I really felt like Simon tried what he could. He even went around and tried to find someone else to help out.
Now the receptionist — I had 3 encounters with her. The first was by phone. The lady who answered was quick with me, I almost said no thanks and moved on. But I figured, hey everyone has an off day. She transfered me to Simon and he was super cool and sealed the deal for me.
The next 2 encounters with her were when I dropped off and picked up my harddrive. The same receptionist seemed annoyed and came across rude.
The first time I let it go. The next two just felt jacked to me. I was in front of another customer who even gave me a look at how she acted toward me. It was pretty uncomfortable.
Besides that, I can’t really talk about Simon’s work bc like I said the drive couldn’t be saved. I will say Simon is very knowledgeable and helpful.
The receptionist though almost made me walk out and needs to relax a bit.

My computer crashed on me 3 days before my final examinations and I freaked out. I ran to the Apple Store but they were unable to help me. It was a Saturday so a few of their recommended Data Recovery businesses were closed. Lucky for me, they put me in touch with Simon from Data Recovery Man; he was able to diagnose my computers situation within 10 minutes, and had all my data transferred into my new computer just in time to take my finals! He was also able to quote me a great price to sell my old computer parts. Thank you so much Simon! I’ll most definitely be referring EVERYONE with computer troubles right to you!

The Data Recovery Man is THE MAN.
So long story short, it seems like my work’s MDM Compliant app wiped my phone because the passcode got entered by someone too many times… don’t ask. So yippee, all my photos and priceless memories are gone!
I wish this did end in a happy story where the date recovery man was able to restore everything, but those corporate MDM apps have a nasty habit of being good at their job and completely wiping everything, especially when it’s a solid state drive (flash memory has it’s pros and cons, go figure).
But what he did excel in was checking out my device for no charge, and being honest that he could not extract much. Communication was great, and he was very quick to check. It turns out though, that my phone did store the photos on my iCloud by some miracle and I was in fact able to get about 70−80% of my pictures back, so alls well that ends well.
I did appreciate the service and consideration the data recovery man took. He could have written this project off as too small, but he gave it his best shot. I will be back if I ever have a related issue!

Simon answered my very first call after hours which in itself eased some of the suffering I was feeling at the time. He was able to get me into the office the very next morning, checked out my drive right there and answered all my questions. So I sent off the drive with some of my most important information to see if they could recover it.
A few days later, I was notified that they were able to recover everything! He gave me advice on which hard drives to use in the future. He also emailed me to tell me he saved a backup so I asked if he could save it an extra day while I was out of town, which went above and beyond.
If they don’t recover data, you don’t pay. That is a pretty awesome deal.
I can’t thank Simon and DRM team enough!!!

My laptop crashed after Adobe’s stupid «creative cloud» basically ravaged my hard drive, and I like an idiot, didn’t back up my data.
I went to the apple store and the genius bar guy secretly recommended me to come here after listing the «apple approved partners» that were like a million dollars and I am so glad he did.
This place is located literally across the street from my apartment in the super posh Plaza Tower off Anton. The receptionist was super helpful and dropping off my laptop was such an easy experience!
I am so thankful that Simon saved my poor little 2009 macbook pro. This thing stored every single vacation, college experience, etc. that I have accrued over the past 6 years. He worked with me on price and recovered the majority of my data all for a reasonable price.
Note: The only reason I say majority recovered is because after I installed my new SSD, OS X Yosemite, and restored the backup from the external recovered by Simon, iphoto did a really strange update. So I’m not entirely sure if it was the iphoto update that lost some photos in each event or if it wasn’t recovered. Given it was only a few, it was just odd that each event album was clipped a few photos short.
Regardless, I am super happy with the service and would recommend to anyone!

My program on my laptop crashed causing me to have missing files so I was referred here. The woman at the counter was less than welcoming and rude. She didn’t listen to what I was saying whatsoever and wouldn’t even answer me if the service I was needing was something they even do. It appears they do more hard drive type issues and mine is a Microsoft Word issue that caused me to lose my thesis. When I told her giving her my laptop for two days would not work for me and asked what my other options were she proceeded to tell me I could give her my laptop for diagnostics for 1 – 2 days. I had just told her that wouldn’t work for me. She repeatedly interrupted me and didn’t listen to my actual issue and that fact I said I needed it resolved today. The phone rang and she proceeded to answer it in the middle of my question and speak to the caller.
Extremely disrespectful on all accounts.

So shocked at the good reviews for this place. Not only were they not able to recover ANY of my data… Simon was an a-​hole to me and literally made me cry. When it comes to retrieving priceless data, you have to be sensitive about it. It’s a stressful thing to go through. Simon showed me no sensitivity and even yelled at me «Your data is NOT recoverable!» when I was simply asking questions while being devastated. Go elsewhere for data recovery.

Simon Partridge and the technical team at DRM (
) are the «Avengers of data recovery!»
They RESCUED close to 10 years worth of photography, along with a host of other data, when my 2TB external hard drive decided to give up the ghost, without any warning. (At the time, I only had a very partial back-​up of my photo library.)
Yes, this positive review is based, in large part, on the fact that the team was actually able to recover my data. This was no small task given that the heads had gone bad on the unit. (Defective heads is a near-​catastrophic situation I’ve come to learn.)
But even if they hadn’t been able to save my data, they still deserved a good review for the following reasons:
*I was able to call during the weekend with my emergency and speak to a real, live person (in this case, Simon) about the problem.
*Simon took the time to listen and give a tentative diagnosis, without making empty promises simply to get my business. And he was patient with me as I asked questions about the hard drive and he didn’t talk down to me when I asked for clarification on unfamiliar technical aspects.
*The DRM team evaluated the condition of my hard drive BEFORE collecting any money.
*Simon did his best to work with me in terms of the service fee.
*Simon was responsive to email messages.
*I was able to complete the service agreement and payment online.
*And they are conveniently located just off the 405 and 55 Freeways in Costa Mesa.
Don’t get me wrong. I am very thankful that I got my data back. But if I hadn’t, I believe I still would have given them a good rating because of the professional treatment I received.

tl;dr version:
DRM communicates clearly what they will do and what it will cost. Is it cheap? No. But if your data matters to you (particularly irreplaceable photos, personal files, client financials, etc), you just want to get it all back. I was extremely relieved to find that Simon’s team can make that happen, and do it quickly. I dropped my stuff off on Fri, had the data recovered & copied to a new external HD by the following Tues morning. Absolutely worth every penny. (And the Unilocal discount helps take the edge off.)
— — — –
So, I am notorious for keeping technology a verrrry long time. (I still have the original iPod Video, circa 2005. I figure, it still works, so who cares?) But I was finally succumbing to the pressure to get a new Win 8 laptop to replace my ancient XP one.
I bought the new Win 8 Asus. A few days later, I did a backup of my old XP Sony Vaio to my external hard drive (also somewhat long in the tooth) in preparation for the transfer I was planning to do over the weekend. The weekend rolls around, I startup the Vaio to get the whole file transfer rigamarole going, and BOOM! my Vaio poops out. It gets in this unending reboot loop with a Blue Screen of Death saying «Unmountable Boot Volume.» Um, this is bad.
But never fear, I have my backup on the external hard drive, so I’ll just get my data from there, right? WRONG! Would you believe that my laptop hard drive AND my external hard drive were BOTH corrupted? That was all my photos (including historic family photos that had been scanned, etc), all my music, all my documents for easily 10 years, all my client files for my bookkeeping business, everything. So, y’know…I cried.
I asked my company’s IT guy whom he might recommend for data recovery. He mentioned a company in Irvine, so I looked at their site, and it just seemed… fishy. They don’t really say specifically what they do or what they charge, and I didn’t feel very comfortable about it. I searched them on Unilocal,and thank heavens I saw DRM in the search results.
I noticed that DRM had more and better reviews than the place that had been recommended to me, so I immediately went to DRM’s site, and saw everything clearly explained and pricing clearly listed. A total sigh of relief. The prices weren’t cheap, but when the data is priceless… what aren’t you willing to pay?
I dropped my stuff off on a Fri, had the evaluation/​estimate back by the end of the day, and had 50 GB of data recovered & copied to my new external HD by the following Tues morning. All with follow up calls from the owner Simon, himself. Couldn’t be happier. Thank you!