My external hard drive would not respond when I tried to access it. I called the manufacturer and because it was out of warranty they told me my best bet was take it to a data recovery service locally and they had a list of companies they partnered with. I went too ESS because they were close ad were listed on the manufactures partner list. I was told by ESS that the board was bad AND the drive was bad. I received an email telling me that the cost was $850 and that they would give me a 10% discount to $765. We decided that was more than we could spend and would have to save up so that eventually we could get our photos and other important information back sometime.
I decided to stop at another place (((competitor's name redacted))) on my way home even though they weren't a partner with the drive Manufacturer. I went in and they took the casing off my drive and it took them a minute to get it open because 2 of the srews were beneath a sticker on the casing. ESS had obviously never even removed the drive from its casing! After taking it apart the guy at (((redacted))) determined that rather than having 3 failed drive heads as I was told by ESS, only the board was bad. I left in 25 minutes with all of my data on a new drive for only $80.64. I've never felt s taken advantage of in my life. Either ESS does not know what they are doing or they are dishonest. I don't know which it is but I hope no one has to pay what almost had to for no reason.