The case involved recovering information from a hard drive belonging to an associate (who now knows the importance of backups) which, after a power failure, was ''dead''. Not having had any prior experience with data recovery services, I searched the internet and, based on a number of factors, decided to contact Secure Data Recovery (SDR). My phone call was answered by Tim who was professional, polite, and knowledgeable. After some discussion, I decided to go forward with SDR''s service.Tim emailed me a prepaid shipping label, so the process of getting the drive to SDR was fairly painless. (It seems that they once had a liaison with a local entity to which the drive could have been taken, but that no longer exists. Shipping the drive was no problem, though.) The drive arrived at their facility in a day, and I was contacted a couple of days later with their analysis and data recovery cost.The information on the drive was important, but not critical, so I chose the "Standard Service 7 - 12 Business Days". That translated into about three actual weeks, and at that time I received a note asking me to verify the CONTENTS of the recovered information (actual data NOT included, of course). As it happens, there were some corrupted files from the head crash, but far more files were recovered "good" than "bad".The last step was to authorize the shipment of an encrypted storage device containing the actual data. I received a passcode via email to unlock the encrypted drive.The encrypted drive is a Western Digital Passport which includes hardware encryption. Unlocking applications are available for Windows and Mac users - but not Linux which is what I happen to use. It did require a bit of research, but I was able to successfully unlock the drive and copy all the data therefrom. It is as much a Western Digital issue as SDR, though it would be helpful if SDR provided the Linux instructions. That is a minor quibble, and I do understand ''the market''.Now, price. That is a very individual thing. The very true rule-of-thumb is that it costs much more to recover or recreate data than to adequately protect in the first place. My choice, was that recovery was worth the cost.Again, Tim was most helpful throughout the process and answered my emails quickly and professionally.This is not a process I would wish to repeat, but, should that need arise, SDR would be my first choice.