If you opt for the standard evaluation, we will require 2 to 3 working days for evaluation.

If you choose priority evaluation, it will be carried out within 1 working day.

If you choose Emergency 24/7 service, it will be carried out within 4 Hours of Media Submission. Click Here For More Details

Firstly, you need to follow the recovery submission procedure outlined in order to send in your hard disk to us for evaluation.

Upon receiving the media, we will perform an evaluation to access the actual work and resources needed to recover the data. This is followed by a firmed quotation to the customers. Once the quotation is accepted, recovery process will begin.

The initial work done will be to determine if the data media is still accessible using specialised lab equipment.

If the media is still accessible, a raw image will be captured using non-destructive read process and an extensive logical analysis will be carried out to determine the amount of data which can be recovered. This process involves restructuring of data by studying low-level bits of data sector and applying fixes to cryptic file system structure so that the logical data could be accessible.

For hard drives with physical damage, the faulty components will be isolated before some costs estimates could be determined.

To recover data from crash hard drives, a Class 100 clean lab environment to replace the damaged components is required. This also includes the use of specialised and proprietary hardware and software tools. Faulty components could be the read/write head, motors or electronics.

In some situations, both physical and logical fix may be required. Using sophisticated techniques and proprietary equipment / software tools, the low level data hexadecimal codes on the disks will be extracted, examined and repaired before data could be accessible.

This is especially so in view of the wide ranges of hard disk brands and models. The problem could be further compounded by user EFS encryption , hard disk password lock etc.

After getting the user’s approval to go ahead with the recovery, we will prepare the drive in a “ready-state” and perform the necessary recovery. The data is filtered and quality check is done before a file list is presented to the user for review. Take a look of an overview of our data recovery process.

The period of recovery will take into consideration several factors:

* Types of media, whether it is a removable media or hard disk. In the case of hard disk failure, it depends on brands and models which will be related to the hard disk capacity, form factor, connection types and related technology.

* Causes of failure types, if it is logical or physical, and in that case, the extent of damage and the failure modes

* Types of file system used. For instance, UNIX file system is generally more difficult to recover than Windows file systems

* Types and amount of data required

* Any prior attempts with add-on complication

* When express service is used, the time taken will be within 1 to 2 days. Typical turn around time by Cromac averages about 2 to 3 days. In some special cases with more complex issues, longer time may be needed though it is rather uncommon.

The idea of charging the cancellation fee is to discourage those who are not genuine in pursuing the data recovery process with us.

Please refer to our pricing guide for more information.

You can deliver the data media to us personally during the office hour (Mon to Fri from 9 am to 6 pm) or request for collection service. Of course you may dispatch the media to us using your own courier agent.

Remember to fill up the online request form first and mark the job request ID on the media before sending in.

You may also read our submission procedures in full details.

Evaluation of between 2 to 3 days is simply an estimate. 90% of the job is evaluated within 1 working day upon submission.

However, in the case when job queue is long, only the jobs under priority evaluation will be completed first before we turn our attention to standard evaluation.

You may want to choose our express queue so that we will complete the recovery within 24 to 48 hours, generally we could complete the job within 24 hours.

We can make special arrangement if you want the data to be even faster. Click Here for More Details

Evaluation is carried out to determine the problem of the hard drive, cost and time needed to recover the data. At this stage, the content of the hard drive is not visible. No recovery has been carried out during this step.

Only upon acceptance of quotation will the engineer start the recovery work and retrieve the data, after which a file list will be sent in the recovery report to you.

By default, we will recover all the data for you. If you have special data that must be recovered, you could specify it in your data recovery request form and we will pay special attention during recovery.

After recovery, you will be sent a recovery report with list of files recovered. You can then choose to verify the recovered data in our office and if your required data is not recovered, we will not charge. There is no catch. Cromac simply guarantees total customer satisfaction.

Yes, all files as you wish. In general, we will only recover all your critical data files first and leave out the windows or program files as these are normally not essential to the users. If you wish, you could indicate to us the types of program files you need and we will recover them too.

Please note that even if the system or program files are recovered, the applications and operating system will still need to be re-installed before they can be used.

It could be due to the file structure of the data recovered. For example, if the recovered data has many layers of directories / folders with long or strange characters/fonts, a single file size exceeding 2 GB etc., burning of DVD may fail.

In some cases, when the distribution of data is large and complex, the data will have to be manually fitted into many CD/DVD, such allocation of data may erroneously result in data omission.

To ensure integrity of the recovered data, we advise customers to bring a USB drive or bare hard disk to do the data transfer.

Yes, we are able to recover encrypted data. We have done so for many banks and government institutions. Click Here For More Details