A Worthwhile Insurance Policy

[blueball]

3 years protection for your Hard Drive for £23

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/freec...-any-brand-hdd

That seems pretty good given the cost of normally getting data of a disk.

[Agent]

It's all going to depend on the quality of the data recovery really. If they're just going to stick in it an external caddy and declare "nope, doesn't work!", then it's mostly useless. If it's a full blown data recovery service in line with the major suppliers, it's not too bad.

It comes back to the age old word though: Backup.

[Jay]

I would need to see the Ts & Cs to see if its really worth the money.

[Saracen]

....

It comes back to the age old word though: Backup.

^^^ That.

Whether this is good value or not depends on a couple of things, not least :-

a) your backup provisions
b) the value of the data on the drive,
c) what happened to the drive, necessitating recovery.

As I read it (and they're pretty clear about it) there is no guarantee you'll get your data back. Merely that they'll use the "most advanced technology in data" to try. Realistically, success cannot be guaranteed, or they'll be given a disk shattered into 1000 pieces and be expected to get 100% of data back.

So really, this comes down to an assessment of the cost of the service, in relation to a) through c).

If your data is really valuable, you're a moron if you haven't got a thorough backup strategy in pace, and operating. So this service should be of minimal use.

If your data is inconsequential, is it worth the cost of the service?

So we're only really looking at the territory in-between, or those daft enough not to have some form of backup/archiving in place, and if that's the case, I wonder if they'd have the foresight to buy the recovery insurance?

[blueball]

So we're only really looking at the territory in-between, or those daft enough not to have some form of backup/archiving in place, and if that's the case, I wonder if they'd have the foresight to buy the recovery insurance?

Good point

[watercooled]

As above really, data recovery should only be necessary as a last resort for someone who hasn't backed anything up. To buy this they are planning for the eventuality of HDD failure, in which case a good backup strategy would be far more reliable (recovery is far from guaranteed) and likely much cheaper.