I thought my career was over after I dropped my Lacie raid drive and couldn't access the data (which included many photo and video jobs including several weddings)! I was so relieved when I found Promise Data Recovery in my neighborhood. I was able to drop off my drive, consult with someone in person, then pick it up when they magically recovered EVERYTHING! I am so grateful to these guys. Great service, highly recommend. read more

I never write reviews, I think it is kind of lame. But the experience which I had, I would like to share with other people may be it can help some one. Are you looking for the Data recovery or not. May be you will need it one day anyways. My Mac book crapped on me one day. All I was getting a folder with question mark. I took the book to Apple genius bar and they told me my hard drive was bad. Any how they installed new hard drive with fresh operating system for me since the computer was under protection plan. Mac recommended me to take the hard drive to some company for data recovery; they also referred me few name but those companies were in California. Here the problem was. I can not send my drive to some other city with out knowing who is looking into my personal data. Now my search begins for someone local. I picked up Yellow pages and start calling around. In yellow page most of the business which I called were closed down or asking too much for the data recovery. I used internet to find some local company and also called around for help. I dealt with the same scenario; most of the business never answered and few of them asked me too much. In my search and call around experience, I learned one thing. When a hard drive fails, it fails from software problem and hardware issues. Software problem are minor and local computer stores can handle the issue; however, if your hard drive have a hardware issue, then you are doomed. You need to take it to some Recovery Company because local computer stores do not go beyond software recovery. In fact guys, if you know little bit about computers you can do software recovery at home by your self. Just Google it. Also hard drive problems could be dead hard drive, drive making some noise. Finally, I found this one recovery company which was few minutes drive from my house named as Promise data recovery. Web site, http://www.promise-data-recovery.com, I decided to take the drive to them. They quoted me a grand for the recovery. One grand is too much for a domestic user like me but my unreplacing data was there so I decided to go ahead with that. I have to pay that amount after dividing it on three different credit cards once my data was ready. Here the whole point of this review. If your computer stopped working due to a faulty hard drive, then you need to figure out if the drive has a software issue or hardware failure. Find it out. Fix software issues by your self or take it to some local computer store. For hardware failure you do not have much choice. You need to take it to professionals and you are looking at minimum of a grand. Either get rid of the damage drive and forget about the data or wait until you have enough funds to come up with the amount and then find some one local. read more

*UPDATE* In response to Samual R Review on 1-4-15- Thank you for the information, however the way my phone was handled was not my original complaint. I am sure you did all you could to fix my phone. Again, it is a matter of communication that needs to be addressed at your company. If all along, this whole process was explained to me while my phone was actually in the process of being fixed, maybe I would have understood it better. Instead, I was left feeling ignored and not called back when promised. Also, I would assume you wouldn't charge me for something that the company couldn't fix. It wasn't any special favor for me. I am not trying to sound mean here, I just think the main complaint was missed. Thanks for your help. read more

I stopped by 3 separate times during the posted business hours and no one was ever there. Nothing but ups delivery notices on the door. Called 4 times and left messages to call me and never got a return call despite message saying they would call back shortly. Would give no stars if it was an option. read more

The crew at Promise Data Recovery are the real deal. Timely quote, fair price (not cheap, but fair) and a job well done on recovering data from a crashed hard drive that couldn't be fixed by normal drive utilities like Disk Warrior or Data Rescue. Remember folks, back up frequently! But if you get caught without a backup and have to have your data, go with Promise. read more

I cannot get any response about my hard drive they have kept for 2 weeks. Went to the office and a sign on the door said contact by phone, which is disconnected as well as the 1800 number. SOS! read more

This place is awesome! I am a wedding photographer, and had crushed memory cards after they were ran over. I know....long story. Anyways, I received a fast quote, and in less than a week they had nearly fully recovered one of the cards. This was after I used a different company who only uses software recovery, which nearly fried my cards beyond recovery. Promise Data uses a feature as well where you can link with their computer online and view the files they have recovered...both you and the person speak over the phone and you can discern whether or not to go forward with recovery. They shipped my images on DVD overnight (shipped Friday evening, received Saturday morning; impressive) CHOOSE THESE GUYS! Awesome customer service, and they know their stuff. They do both softtware recovery and hardware recovery, meaning that if your cards are damaged, they can either use software to recover it, or physically take the memory chip out and attempt a recovery that way. Very reasonable $ for the service. read more

The staff is exceptionally nice and professional. Sadly, my hard drive had physical damage beyond the scope of their recovery abilities and they kindly overnighted my drive to a lab in California that is currently attempting to salvage what they can. read more

"In reply to Cheryl K. review posted 1/2/2015 on the behalf of Promise Data Recovery" First of all, on the behalf of Promise Data Recovery, I would like to apologize Miss Cheryl K. for having a bad customer services experience. Before saying more words, I would to explain what we do? how we do it? and why it can be lengthy process while comparing with your case? Miss Cheryl- My Name is R, Samuel and I work in Chicago North LAB and I personally obtained the details on your case. According to the case notes: Your media was received under DEAD/DROPPED/WATER Damaged smart phone recovery. Recoveries like these are very time consuming as we have to recreate the structure from scratch. The methods and techniques used by Promise data Recovery are not similar as the ways being used in any tradition computer store where a tech can rule out right away if your media is gone forever. In disaster recovery drill, we are trained to use an optimistic approach in any given scenario and we follow each and every procedure by the book. In standard data retrieval process, when any questioned/Damage media start responding to the recovery tools, always a major issue is the retrieval speed. In some cases, we have to stretch our recovery time frames to the maximum days. The sole purpose is to offer you as much data as possible. It does not delight us to hold your media just for nothing. Case like yours when we have to deal with NAND FLASH Chip where we cannot extract complete memory bank from the embedded chip then some cases we offer partial recovery based on the extracted information and some cases NO RECOVERY at all. Our deal to a respective client is salvaging data and providing it back in working condition. Releasing corrupted data and processing payment based on those results are not our policies. Although you only mentioned bad customer service experience in your review but I explained the background process anyways to relate it with the whole picture. Based on my findings, I assured you that Promise Data Recovery did not invoice you a single penny for any work/effort we put in your damaged device. Not only that, we have also provided you a complementary shipment. In short, we worked on your case with constructive objective even though the case was turned down by some earlier establishment before bringing to us. Last but not least, if one of our employees used some sort of bad language with you or disrespect you in any way, please directly call me at 773-539-9387 and I will handle this issue personally. I also would like to point out that you case was received near holidays season and during this time of the year, we are limited on the Number of Engineers as everyone else is. On the same hand, our response time to any email communications and phone calls also get affected. Best Regards, R, Samuel. Chicago Lab North read more

I'm a student at Northeastern Illinois University and my MacBook crashed on me. I found Promise Data Recovery through yelp and decided to take a chance. Not only were the employees very helpful with the recovery, they were able to answer all my questions and I felt at ease. I received all my data within a timely matter and look forward to using this business again. read more

My primary hard drive went down. Unfortunately, so did my backup.Two separate failures around the same time as one another. My stomach dropped at the thought of losing all the pictures of my new baby. My attempt at recovery failed. The attempt by my IT guy at work failed. I found Promise on Yelp and crossed my fingers. My main hard drive was physically damaged. There was nothing they could do. When they examined my backup they said it also was very badly damaged but because the platters were intact they could attempt a recovery. The time frame given was 5-7 days, but it took far longer, and the first repair attempt yielded less than ideal results. When I explained that there still seemed to be large gaps in the data they took my drive back and attempted a second repair. It still took another few weeks but I received a fantastic phone call that the entire drive was recovered, pictures and all. It required patience on my part but Promise delivered and I now have our memories back. read more

Had a client with two RAID 5 drives that failed in a VMWARE Environment before the backup kicked off. Sam worked his magic and was able to recover all of the missing data. I was expecting we tried, but couldn't get it and I got we succeeded in recovering data. I would recommend Promise to anyone who needs this service. Everyone is polite and knowledgeable. read more

I have had a couple of occasions to use them for data recovery; once because of a spill on a laptop, once to rescue ancient software from ancient hardware and once when a decade-old motherboard and power supply gave out and corrupted a drive. They were very courteous and professional, did an excellent job and I would recommend them without hesitation. read more

I dropped my hard drive off, then went over a month with no response I my calls or emails. I finally just went there and retrieved my hard drive with no explanation of why it took so long to get no results or replies. I would never go back here. read more