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Selkowitz Technology | Seattle's small business network and telecom consultant

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Data loss is an amazingly stressful situation – businesses lose serious money and even go out of business because of lost data. One of my clients recently got in the position of needing data recovery services (important lesson – use your backup system!) and wasn’t comfortable sending the drive to Ontrack’s california office. So upon looking we found ADR was a national company with a Seattle data recovery office.

Upon verifying with ADR that they could recovery a Reiser filesystem and service would be done locally, my client brought the drive in. The local recovery tech attempted recovery and without notifying the client they sent it to their main lab in California. More than a week went by and they claimed the drive was “difficult” and data recovery was possibly unrecoverable, the client demanded the drive back.

This time I got to take the drive to Ontrack. What I didn’t know was for functioning drives Ontrack has Remote Data Recovery (RDR) where they can recover a drive over the internet! What ADR said may be unrecoverable, Ontrack had done in TWO DAYS!

In my experience Ontrack is the right choice for data recovery of Reiser drives.

Note: post updated 10/1/08 to correct erroneous information about ADR’s facilities per their request.

15 Responses to “Why You Shouldn’t Hire ADR Data Recovery for Reiser Recovery”

1. JT Says:
   August 24th, 2007 at 6:00 am

   Wow, sorry to hear you had such an ordeal with ADR. At my company we use CBL data recovery (http://www.cbltech.com) and have no problems. Haven’t tried Ontrack. JT

2. NJ Says:
   September 14th, 2007 at 4:02 pm

   Try ReWave next time. You’re right, ADR does have dropoff locations. ReWave is one of the most honest companies I’ve dealt with and they don’t screw around with you on the price.

3. Kevin Says:
   September 21st, 2007 at 8:24 pm

   I wonder what ADR and Ontrack said was wrong with the drive. No doubt they were different assessments. Regardless, your client probably paid to much if it was done remotely (Meaning there was nothing physically wrong with the drive). There are a number of commercially available programs (R-Studio, GetDataBack, Ontrack EasyRecovery, etc.) that recover logically damaged hard drives for a fraction of what recovery companies charge. My company has had luck with ESS Data Recovery, but if it is a logical problem (Format, Deletion, Virus) we recover the data ourselves. It saves us both time and money.

4. Kevin Selkowitz Says:
   September 21st, 2007 at 9:07 pm

   I agree in house data recovery makes sense and is a good value for logical issues on common filesystems. One detail I forgot to mention is this was a ReiserFS system. No one I know had ever recovered a ReiserFS drive, ReiserFSCK failed, and the apps available weren’t promising.

5. Brent Jackson Says:
   September 25th, 2008 at 11:35 am

   Kevin,

   ADR’s locations are not drop off points. ADR does recoveries at all of it’s locations including Seattle, but at the time of this post we were still in the process of setting up our Seattle lab. However if the drive needs extensive clean room work the drive will be shipped to our clean room. We also offer Remote Data Recovery just like Ontrack but I will say that the Data Recovery industry has not perfected the recovery of ReiserFS filing systems. Kuddos to Ontrack as they have created their own system for recovering data from ReiserFS filing systems. Some of the things that you have stated on this post are untrue and make it sound like ADR does not know what they are doing and that we are dishonest in our industry. The fact is that we hav accounts and perform recoveries for the larges companies in the world and are one of the only companies that can do this in most major cities in the US.

   ADR is demanding that you take this post down as it is un true and devastating to our buisness. We will be forced to take legal action if this is not taken care of ASAP.

6. Truth Says:
   January 7th, 2009 at 12:04 pm

   ADR does NOT have their own clean room facilities. No matter what they claim, it is simply not true. Just ask for a timestamped photo of their lab and see what happens. We got a drive back from them that was full of fingerprints and dust — two things which should not exist in a “clean environment”. Full of spelling errors, the post by Mr. Jackson seemed harsh and almost childish with its threats. If the drive was able to be recovered remotely, then there was no need for a cleanroom anyway, as any bad sectors will have Ontrack requesting the drives to be sent to their labs anyway. ReiserFS is incredibly straight forward and easy to recover from. Aside from built in filesystem tools included in the various flavors of linux, there are a number of third party tools both windows and linux that can easily recover and rebuild lost data from ReiserFS. Now, why anyone would use a filsystem created by a convicted killer is another story entirely.

7. Bill Says:
   May 3rd, 2009 at 2:02 pm

   ADR is a company that does not base itself on morals of any kind.Constant overcharging,in some cases thousands of dollars. Having visited their main building in California I can attest to the fact that they do not have a clean room of any kind and only have a couple of sattelite locations which are also located in California (one person with a desktop). They also use software that can easily be obtained and used on the home computer for a fraction of the cost. For anyone considering ADR for their recovery needs, please look elsewhere. There are several legitimate companies that are held to a much higher moral standard.

8. Mr. Tekkie Says:
   May 23rd, 2009 at 9:04 am

   It doesn’t surprise me that ADR doesn’t have a clean room at ANY of their offices. Any REAL cleanroom needs to be certified at least every 6 months by a certification company. Look it up on Wikipedia.
   Any data recovery company MUST have a cleanroom and should always be able to offer PROOF of certification. The rest are FAKES and there are many.
   If you want to see data recovery companies that are REAL and offer PROOF see Ontrack and DriveSavers Data Recovery.

9. Anonymous Says:
   May 24th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

   Bill’s right. ADR is a shady practice. A run of the mill data recovery company that likes to leave customers in the dark and use fear tactics to coerce them into paying outrageous prices. If it can’t be recovered with their basic software from a satellite location then it will be shipped to the “headquarters”. When it can’t be recovered there, it will be shipped to Ontrack. Then, the company will mark up the price! Do yourselves a favor and save yourself the time and money and go to Ontrack. Cut out the middle man. Visit this man’s site. Probably the most hated person in the industry because he spills the beans and informs people of what data recovery is all about! He’ll give you step by step details of how to perform your own recoveries!

   http://www.myharddrivedied.com/

   PS, Brent is wrong. ADR has many drop-off points. They perform logical recoveries at these sites using software that can be easily obtained for dirt cheap prices. Kevin mentioned many of the software packages above.

10. poser Says:
    August 2nd, 2009 at 10:45 pm

    You may be right but i used Stellar Phoenix Linux recovery tool for my Reiser Recovery.I am satisfied with this software and luckily they provide services as well.

11. Yuri Rubinov Says:
    September 15th, 2009 at 6:59 am

    I believe you are right saying that ADR probably is not a right choice.
    When picking up my harddrive after evaluation at their Philadelphia office I found it on the receptionist table without static bag, even I brought it to them in the static safe bag. For me it is clear sign that they do not follow the proper precaution procedures for electronic devices.
    Not to mention that they tried to charge me about twice more than other company I contacted.

12. Donnie Says:
    October 29th, 2009 at 8:03 am

    Wow, I cannot believe what I am reading. I work for a large tech company and we have used ADR a lot. They have always been very professional with us. In fact our company likes them so much that we have a corporate contract with them. All of our data recovery goes to ADR. I believe that they are the second largest data recovery company only to Ontrack. As such, I am sure they get their share of individual customer issues where someone doesn’t quite get what they need or thier service with ADR wasn’t what they wanted. All I can say, that has not been the case with us. ADR has recovered databases that absolutely NO One else was able to get (even Ontrack) and when one of our RAID servers went down, Again, ADR was the only company that was able to get the data back for us. So….before you spout off about what a ‘bad’ or ‘shady’ company they are, maybe you should just personalize your comments OR….do what most professionals would do…contact ADR directly and let them know you are dissatisfied. As for my personal experience, they are top notch. Are there other companies that can do what they do? I am certain of it. Besides Ontrack however, I do not know who they would be. Our company certainly do not use them.

13. Anonymous Says:
    December 9th, 2009 at 7:23 am

    Donnie,

    That’s interesting because I know for a fact that a large portion of unrecoverable jobs were sent to Ontrack. ADR has discounts with Ontrack just as your company has a partnership with ADR. ADR has there own equipment (PC3000, Data Imagers, etc) but Ontrack has proprietary recovery equipment that they engineered themselves. Unless your “large RAID server” went down a few years ago then I find it hard to believe that they were the only company that was able to retrieve it. Their RAID expert (one of the best in the country) is no longer with them and it’s been the case for several years now.

14. Rusty Says:
    February 23rd, 2010 at 10:10 am

    Avoid ADR. They have some shady business practices, if not outright illegal. Thank God my credit card company could see just how incompetent and deceptive they were and reversed the charges.

15. Kelly Says:
    March 25th, 2010 at 10:36 am

    Would love to discuss this with you Rusty! We are going through similar situation and would like feedback…

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