Seagate Extends Data Recovery Services To Reseller Partners

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The services will be available from ActionFront, a data recovery provider Seagate, Scotts Valley, Calif., acquired last November. ActionFront, based in Toronto, provides high-level data recovery capabilities, from data restores after virus damage to restoration of media that has suffered damaged from water, fire, or other problems.

Seagate resellers can now contract with ActionFront for data recovery and receive a commission based on the type of work that can be done, said Stewart Laszlo, ActionFront's director of marketing, in an interview with CRN Monday. Laszlo declined to specify the specifics amounts of commission available.

Ed Wiggers, owner of EdWare Technologies, Vancouver, Canada, said using ActionFront's service allows him to provide a level of recovery that he couldn't normally consider offering customers on his own. Though he does some software-based recovery onsite, he said more severe problems need to be done in a lab environment. He pointed out that recovery efforts of damaged drives often involved removing a drive's platter and that most be done in a clean room. Special filters used in clean rooms costs upwards of $30,000, he said.

"It is difficult to offer this kind of service in house," he said. "It has to be done in a dust-free environment. Even a smoke particle could crash a head."

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Wiggers, who has used ActionFront's services prior to the recent launch of its reseller program, said he has sent drives from consumers who have lost photos and didn't have a back-up to media from the Canadian Federal Government and Coast Guard that failed and needed to be mounted on a new head so that the data could be extracted.

Laszlo said most of ActionFront's direct customers are enterprise and consumers. These customers can send media directly to ActionFront or opt to have a technician visit the location onsite to assess the problem. ActionFront strives to get technicians to the location within 24 hours of a support call, he said.

ActionFront currently services customers in Canada, United States and Europe. In the United States, the data recovery firm maintains three offices in Schaumburg, Ill.; Santa Clara, Calif.; and Atlanta.