Nobody asks this out loud, so here is the answer anyway.

Who touches it

Two people work on this bench and both of them are named on the wall by the door. Nothing is sent out, nothing goes to a third party for imaging, and no machine goes home with anybody. If a job needs a specialist cleanroom, which is roughly one job a year, you will be told the name of the company before it leaves and you can say no.

What gets copied

Before a drive is touched, a full image of it is made onto shop storage. That is not optional and it is included in the price of every job, because the only unforgivable outcome in this trade is losing something that was there when it arrived.

That image is deleted fourteen days after you collect the machine. Not archived, not kept for reference. If you want it kept longer, say so and we will keep it for thirty days at no charge, which people sometimes want after a bad recovery.

The password

Bring it. Most jobs are faster with it and some are impossible without it, and it is written on the ticket and shredded when the ticket closes. If you would rather not hand it over, say so at the counter, because for about half of the jobs on the index there is a route that does not need it and we will take that route instead.

What we will not do

• Break into a machine for anyone who is not the owner. Not for a spouse, not for a parent of an adult, not for an employer without something in writing on letterhead.
• Recover a device that has been reported stolen, and we check when the story is unusual.
• Copy anything off a machine for anybody other than the person who brought it in.
• Discuss what was on a machine with anyone at all, including the person who recommended us.

The one exception is the legal one, which every shop in the country has, and it is images of child abuse. Those get reported and there is no discussion about it.

The old drive

When a disk is replaced, you get the old one back in a bag, with the ticket. That is deliberate. It means the copy of your data leaves in your hand and not in our bin.

If you would rather not take it, we will wipe it in front of you or destroy it, and destroy means a drill through the platter while you watch, not a promise on a form.

Backups, said plainly

Roughly a third of the work on this bench would not have been necessary, or would have been an hour instead of a week, if the machine had a backup running. We are aware this argues against our own revenue.

• Two copies is not a backup if both are in the same house. A fire, a theft and a lightning strike all take both.
• A backup you have never restored from is a hypothesis. Restore one file from it today and find out.
• An external drive that is always plugged in gets encrypted by the same ransomware that gets the machine. Unplug it between uses, or use something with versions.

Setting one up is a flat forty dollars including showing you how to check it, and we will do it during any other job for nothing.