Kent Nerburn
★★★★★
I don't normally write reviews. But I want you to hear this.
I am an author. I have made my living by writing books for almost 40 years. I have never been technologically sophisticated and I do not treat my data or storage systems with respect.
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In the late 90's I undertook a project that resulted in me transcribing notes on an early generation Mac using a Macwrite program and storing those notes on various disks of various origins. When the book was done I threw those disks unprotected into a dusty drawer where they were exposed to heat and cold and probably spilled coffee. I thought I would never need them and don't even know why I saved them
A few years ago a publisher indicated interest in the book, which had since gone out of print. They also wanted some of the old raw material that had never been published. I had scribbled rough identification notes on some of the disks, but had not kept track of anything.
Desperate, I sent the pile of disks off to a highly reputable and not cheap data recovery service. After weeks of having the disks, they sent me back a jump drive with mostly unintelligible data and code. “The material is unrecoverable,” they told me. I accepted the defeat and gave up on the project.
Recently, publishers have again shown interest. Figuring it was worth one more shot, I found Tyler at Champlin Guys Data Recovery and brought him the disks. I expected I was just throwing money away, but decided it was worth the small investment to once and for all put my fantasies of finding that old manuscript to bed.
Within days, Tyler called me and said he had technologies that might be able to recover some of the material. Long story short, within a week he had done what no one else had been able to do: he had recovered all my material, identified it, organized it and collated it. Not only had he been able to get the data, he had given it back to me in a package that would have amazed a fortune 500 company with its professionalism. He had found lost manuscript fragments that I didn't even remember. And he had been able to give me a running document with narrative clarity and internal notations about areas of concern or unclarity. It was, on all levels, a brilliant job.
If you need professional data recovery of any sort, remember my experience: Tyler at Champlin Guys did in short order and for an incredibly reasonable fee what a highly respected national data recovery service had not been able to do. Put it this way: your data is not lost, it just hasn't been recovered. And Tyler at Champlin Guys is the one who can recover it. In terms of sheer talent and creative cyber skills, he is a miracle worker.