Here, a lab will tell you when not to call them. This is unusual. It can happen if the initial use of free recovery software is the most appropriate thing for you to do, and thus spending money with us would be an unnecessary expenditure of your money. However, the same software used incorrectly (on the wrong drive) can quickly convert a recoverable data loss into a non-recoverable data loss. Therefore, the entire process depends on determining what type of situation you are dealing with. Below is the honest version.
The only thing that really matters about your hardware in this whole process: is it good enough to keep going, or is it starting to fail? Recovery software can assist if your hardware is good enough to keep working; however, if it is starting to fail, software can put your data in danger.
There's a very real time when using completely free recovery software for an actual recovery is warranted: the drive itself is functioning properly, and the data loss is logical. You went ahead and deleted a folder you didn't want to delete. You quick-formatted a memory card just after it had been mounted and was reading normally. You emptied the recycle bin and realised almost instantly that you made a mistake. In all three of those scenarios, the data isn't lost. The data exists and is stored on a working disk. The task is merely finding those files which the file system no longer knows exist, which is specifically what recovery software is designed to accomplish. If the drive is mounting normally, reading at normal speeds, making no unusual sounds and the only problem is some data you desired is missing, then trying out a well-established and reputable free tool first would be a reasonable course of action. If the software does recover your desired data, you'll be saving money on your recovery costs, and any honest lab will confirm this: we direct people to DIY tools over the phone regularly when we know that's the best solution.
When software tries to access a bad (or failing) drive, data loss occurs. Recovery software uses multiple reads of an entire disk (often many times) in order to find recoverable data. When this is done on a failing drive, each time it reads the disk, it kills it a little bit. It's asking a drive with failing heads or bad sectors to read continuously for hours over those same sectors. What could be a complete recovery from a careful single-pass image may result in only partial recovery. Or, the drive may fail during the process of the scan and take all the good data as well. Worse, some "recovery" tools claim they can repair bad sectors and fix issues found during the scan by writing fixes back into the original failed drive. This can further compromise your ability to recover lost data. The software isn't badly made; it's just built on the assumption that the hardware works, and on a failing drive, that assumption is false.
Because your decision hinges solely upon "healthy" vs. "failing", the most important skill in determining which direction is best is distinguishing the two, and usually the drive's behaviour will tell you. The signs that indicate the drive is failing, and therefore software should stay well away, include, but are not limited to: clicking, beeping, or grinding sounds while attempting to access the data stored on the drive; the drive does not appear at all; the drive appears then disappears; the entire computer freezes while trying to access the data on the drive; reading data from the drive takes an extremely long time; or the drive is suddenly requesting to have its partition reformatted. Signs that indicate the drive is probably healthy, and therefore some form of software is viable (and possibly successful), would include: the drive is mounted and operates normally; data is read off the drive at normal speeds; there are no unusual noises emanating from the drive; and the only problem with the drive is a very specific deletion or formatting issue you can identify. In cases where the health of the drive cannot be clearly determined (and they do exist), treating it as if it is failing provides a safe default position, since there are no downsides associated with making this determination incorrectly (assuming the drive is bad when in reality it is good). Using a free diagnostic resolves the ambiguity without risk.
Solid-state drives (SSDs) and mobile phone storage create another problem for users. On a traditional hard drive, a deleted file remains until it has been rewritten with new information, which is how recovery software works. Most SSDs have a built-in process called TRIM. This will erase the content of a file in a matter of minutes after it's deleted, by design, to keep the drive fast. Thus, on an internal SSD, recovery software often finds nothing to restore, not because it has failed, but because no content remains: the data was wiped almost as soon as you deleted it. As such, if you've deleted an item from an SSD, your best chance to retrieve it is through a backup or by using the Recycle Bin, and time is working against you. However, external SSDs attached via USB may be excluded from TRIM and operate similarly to older-style drives. This is one of the only positive aspects of this area.
If your drive is okay and you've lost some information due to an accident, then first trying out some of the many reliable pieces of software available can be sensible and may even end up saving you a few pounds on professional fees. However, if your drive is failing (making noises, won't mount, throwing errors), attempting to use software will pose real risks, and therefore your best course of action would be to cease all activity and have it imaged before anything else attempts to read it. A lab worthy of consideration will tell you this simply because we'd prefer it if you retained both your data and your money, as opposed to paying us for something you were capable of doing yourself, or worse still handing over a drive which has been made more difficult to recover from having already been scanned. Therefore, if you are unsure which side of the line your drive currently resides on, then that is precisely what a complimentary diagnosis is for: obtain a quote first (either via telephone or through the form), and then bring it into our South Gyle drop-off point, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm, without the need for an appointment, or post it to us from anywhere in Scotland. Alternatively, just ring us and provide a description of events.