Data recovery in Minnesota

Minnesota's data loss is centered on the Twin Cities. Minneapolis and St. Paul, the state capital, along with suburbs such as Bloomington, Brooklyn Park, and Plymouth, are home to a dense cluster of medical device makers, retail and food company headquarters, health insurers, financial services, and a large public research university. Engineers with test data on workstations, analysts with spreadsheets on laptops, and students with theses on external drives all appear regularly. The metro also has a strong design, advertising, and music scene that depends on portable drives full of projects.

Beyond the metro, Rochester is home to a world-known medical center and a large research and healthcare workforce, and Duluth sits at the western tip of Lake Superior with a major inland shipping port, healthcare, and a university. Much of the rest of the state is farm country, with corn, soybeans, sugar beets, and dairy, along with the Iron Range and lake country. ClearQuote serves all of it by mail, with no office in Minnesota. You confirm your case online, we email a free prepaid shipping label, and you drop the package at any carrier location. A single device is a flat $1,200, paid only if we recover your data.

Cities we serve in Minnesota (7)

What puts data at risk in Minnesota

Cold is the risk that sets Minnesota apart. Deep cold snaps, such as the polar vortex of January 2019, push temperatures far below what drives are rated to start in, and a laptop or external drive left in a car overnight can form condensation on its electronics when it is brought inside. Let any cold device warm to room temperature for several hours before you power it on. Very dry winter air also makes static discharge common, so touch grounded metal before handling bare drives. Blizzards and ice storms can down lines for days.

Spring and summer bring different threats. Snowmelt flooding is a regular concern on the Red River along the North Dakota border and on the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, and in June 2012 extreme rainfall caused severe flash flooding in Duluth. Severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and straight-line winds cut power across the state, and lightning-driven surges are common. Keep desktops and NAS units on a UPS with surge protection, keep drives and backups off basement floors, and keep at least one backup somewhere outside your home.

Minnesota data recovery — common questions