DIY data recovery seems like a good idea when you consider what online services charge. But do-it-yourself is not necessarily the best way to go. You first have to consider these three backup issues:

1. What caused or is likely to cause data loss?
2. How much data was lost?
3. What kind of data was lost?
4. How important was the data lost?

If yours is a medium to large company, you may want to build your own database backup team to handle your needs. You can eventually use this capability to get back your investment and turn a profit by taking on outside jobs.

DIY’s main advantage is the time element. When you do it yourself, you can start data recovery immediately before your business feels the impact of data loss.

DIY data recovery has a cost advantage if you regularly use the service or the data loss is so minimal or simple that it can easily be handled by you or your IT team. D-I-Y also makes sense if you regularly backup your work.

The cost disadvantage of DIY data recovery is if data loss is so massive that it takes your IT team more than a few hours to handle the problem. In this case, paying a few hundred dollars to fix things will probably be the better option.