Data Recovery vs. Digital Forensics

We understand the data recovery and digital forensics process can be confusing. Read below for the distinctions between the two.

Digital Forensics…or Data Recovery?

Gillware has been solving data loss problems for clients around the United States and around the world since 2004, repairing failed hard drives, salvaging data from crashed RAID servers, and making huge strides in solid state data recovery tools and techniques. Since 2016, Gillware has been meeting the digital forensics needs of law enforcement officials, law firms, and businesses of all sizes from across the country.

Our digital forensics services offer a very different set of services than Gour data recovery efforts. As such, the digital forensics process and the pricing for our forensic services differ considerably from the way things work in our data recovery lab.

That said, there’s some significant overlap between digital forensics and data recovery, and sometimes it can be confusing to figure out which umbrella your case falls under. While our forensics experts often work on retrieving data from healthy storage devices, we are also tasked with retrieving deleted data, or salvaging data from broken mobile phones or hard disk drives for forensic analysis, using many of the same tools and techniques developed in Gillware’s data recovery lab.

Is my case a data recovery or digital forensics case?

Digital forensics or data recovery: Which is right for you? Read on to see the differences between these services:

Your Case Is a Digital Forensics Case If You…

  • Are a law enforcement official and need assistance in an ongoing criminal case
  • Are an individual or company seeking information related to a potential or ongoing  civil or criminal litigation
  • Represent a legal firm and need assistance in ongoing civil or criminal litigation
  • Represent a corporation and need data regarding employee exits, employment disputes or possible employee misconduct, or other employment issues
  • Have suffered data loss due to ransomware and need consultation
  • Need a detailed report of a storage device’s contents, but have not necessarily suffered any data loss

Your Case Is a Data Recovery Case If You…

  • Have a failed internal or external hard drive, solid state drive, USB flash drive, SD card, or other device and need data retrieved from it
  • Need data recovered after reformatting your data storage device, reinstalling its operating system, or deleting data from it
  • Need data salvaged from a crashed NAS device, server, or SAN

How does Digital Forensics Differ from Data Recovery?

Our Digital Forensics Services:

  • Forensic assessment and consultation
  • Extraction and analysis of digital information from storage devices while preserving data integrity
  • Documenting and preparing clear, accurate reports on all forensic findings
  • Providing expert testimony in court, if necessary

Our Data Recovery Services:

  • Data recovery from physically or logically damaged data storage devices with no upfront costs and no charge for unsuccessful recovery work
  • Financially risk-free data recovery evaluations
  • Secure data archival and disposal