When data recovery is advertised what does it actually mean?

[powerade]

I see a lot of computer repair shops advertising "data recovery"
What does this actually mean?
what do they do to actually recover the data; are they opening up the hard drives with screw drivers etc... or are they using bootable software like hirens and using the data recovery options on that?

I'm curious. because I would like to add this to my skillset but i'm not sure if my knowledge of data recovery is the same as these computer shops.

 

[vesp3r]

more likely the second... Id say they use sata to usb to connect the drive to a computer and even use software like recuva to restore damaged/deleted files and this way to save files from almost dead drives

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there powerade,

Well, I would say that this should depend on the repair shop. It should have a dust free room. In case the drive is opened up in a dust contaminated environment, then the data on the platter could get unrecoverable easily.
If someone has really important data on a dead/failing HDD, the best thing to do is to contact the manufacturer. Most of the HDD manufacturers offer their own data recovery services or have some sort of trusted data recovery partners.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD