Gillware Inc.

Every month Gillware gives away a small prize to the best customer-submitted recovered photo with description. This is our way of showing how much we value and enjoy helping our customers retrieve their precious data. We know that each and every crashed drive is a disaster and we take personal pride in helping you get it back.

Each month we pick a winner and give away a $25 gift certificate to an internet retailer.

If Gillware has recovered any photos that are particularly meaningful to you, send us an email with a one-paragraph explanation as to why the photo is important to you and attach the photo. Just send the email to with the subject "Photo Contest" if you'd like to enter! So get that favorite baby picture, pet picture, wedding photo out, it could be worth $25!

In May of 2003, my wife and I took the trip of a lifetime, traveling to Russia for the 300th Anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg. We then took a cruise along the Volga River for 10 days, from St. Petersburg to Moscow. I had just purchased my first digital SLR camera and freed from the "burden" of film, happily took thousands of photos on our trip. Once back home, I dutifully downloaded them all to my computer. Because of the size of the files, all my photos resided on my second hard disk in the computer. When that disk failed all of our Russia photos were on it.

In a panic, I called around the area (Silicon Valley) and was quoted between $1,800-2,400 to recover the data off the drive! After searching for about a week, I came across Gillware's website. Encouraged, but sceptical, I called Gillware and spent about 20 minutes on the phone with a technician. He told me that the particular hard drive I had been using was of very poor design, and was the most frequently failed model they'd encountered. I sent off my drive to Gillware, and several days later received a call from another Gillware technician. He said they had recovered the contents of my hard drive, and asked me to verify what data I wanted recovered. My heart soared!

By the end of that week, my new hard drive, containing ALL of my recovered pictures, arrived from Gillware. What a relief! That trip could not have been repeated, and even if it had, the photos could not have been recaptured. One magical night in Moscow, we went to dinner at a highly-regarded restaurant in the Moscow suburbs. We had to take the famous Moscow subway and we marveled at the beauty of each and every subway station. The restaurant was about two long blocks from the subway station and it was raining heavily; we got quite soaked on the walk to the restaurant. Seated cozily in the restaurant, with a beautiful view of the spectacular convent across the street, the storm passed and the sky cleared enough to allow the setting sun to illuminate the buildings. I grabbed my camera, dashed off across the street, and captured this wonderful image of our journey to Russia!

This one photo alone was well worth the price of recovery -- Thank You, Gillware!!!!

George K.
California

First Image