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Rules from eProvided’s founder to keep your data safe
Five pieces of advice from eProvided founder Bruce Cullen.

Top 5 Quotes from Bruce Cullen

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What Is Bruce Cullen’s Top Advice on Data Recovery?

Keep every important file in more than one place. Bruce Cullen, who founded eProvided in 1999, adds four more rules: buy highly recommended drives, choose faster storage, use RAID and SSDs on a PC, and pick a waterproof phone. When a drive fails, stop writing new data to it.

“Learn to use backup systems so that files are located in more than one place.” — Bruce Cullen, founder, eProvided

As the owner and founder of eProvided data recovery service, Bruce understands the importance of accessing your critical files. He has worked in the field of data recovery for more than 27 years, and he has some top-notch advice for everyone who uses data storage devices.

What Does Bruce Cullen Say About Data Recovery?

Bruce Cullen, founder of eProvided, emphasizes that data recovery starts with stopping: do not write new data to a failed drive. He built eProvided on the principle that no client should pay if their data cannot be recovered, which became the firm’s guarantee: No Data, No Data Recovery Fee, in place since 1999. Bruce’s philosophy is built into every case on eProvided’s data recovery services page.

1. “Learn to use backup systems so that files are located in more than one place.”

Top 5 Bruce Cullen quotes
Five rules from the founder of eProvided.

USB flash drive recovery services or MicroSD card recovery services are needed if these devices become broken or damaged with little to no warning. What works perfectly today may not tomorrow, which is why backing up your data is so important. Don’t just back up data on the same storage device. Instead, create a copy and move it to a secondary device. Chances are both devices won’t experience issues at the same time.

Regularly backing up your data will save you time and at least some of the headache of data loss. It can limit the amount of data lost to device damage or file corruption, meaning that if data recovery cannot bring back the lost data, you haven’t lost much. A simple routine works: keep one copy on the computer, a second on an external drive, and a third somewhere else, such as a cloud account or a drive kept at another address. Set the backup to run on a schedule rather than when you remember. Then, once a month, open a few files from the backup to confirm they really copy back. A backup that has never been tested is a guess, not a safety net.

2. “Purchase drives that are highly recommended, many hard drives today are poorly manufactured.”

Devices are in such high demand today that they are produced in bulk. As a result, it is not uncommon for manufacturing standards to slip and device quality to decline. Your best bet is to live by customer reviews. Which devices come highly recommended? Many of these devices may be the same size, but similar drives can be twice as fast at the same cost per GB. Invest in those.

3. “Drive speed is crucial, newer USB or flash memory storage devices are built for faster data transfer speeds.”

Get faster memory sticks so files move quickly enough; this prevents failed file transfers and data loss. Speed really does matter. When it comes to technology, it’s the hare that wins the race over the tortoise. Newer devices have faster speeds compared to older ones. The faster the data transfer, the less chance there is of a file mishap or data corruption.

What’s the takeaway? Don’t be afraid of newer, faster storage technology. Embrace it!

4. “About PC based systems. What RAID means, buy SSD drives for lightning fast drive speeds.”

Your PC will operate in most cases 300% faster. No, we’re not talking about ant spray. When RAID first came on the technology scene, it stood for “redundant array of inexpensive disks.” Today, “inexpensive” has been swapped out for “independent.”

In its simplest terms, RAID is a virtualization technology made to combine multiple disk drive components into a logical unit that improves performance. When combined with SSDs, or solid-state drives, you reap the rewards of unbelievably fast drive speeds. As pointed out earlier, faster speeds mean fewer data mishaps when transferring files from one device to another.

5. “Consumers store data on cell phones. Cell phones that are waterproof like the Samsung Galaxy are a better choice.”

It’s a fact. We take our cell phones everywhere. They are the one Internet-housing, camera-toting, e-mail-checking storage device that runs nearly our entire lives. We save everything from family snapshots to downloaded e-mail attachments. Some of us even run apps in which we create entire documents that we then store and transfer to a tablet or PC. If you stop and think about how much data is held in your phone, you’ll likely realize there is a great amount you would hate to lose.

Protecting your cell phone from mishaps is vital. While a case can go a long way toward protecting the phone from drops and impacts, it doesn’t do much against technology’s archenemy: water. A waterproof phone just might be the best investment you ever make.

The Five Quotes at a Glance

Bruce Cullen’s Five Rules, in Short
RuleWhy It Matters
Back up to a second deviceTwo devices rarely fail at the same time
Buy highly recommended drivesBulk production lets quality slip; reviews show which drives hold up
Choose faster storageA faster transfer leaves less time for a mishap or corruption
Use RAID and SSDs on a PCFaster drive speeds and fewer transfer mishaps
Pick a waterproof phoneA case stops drops, not water

Meet more of the people behind the work in our spotlight on eProvided’s data recovery professionals.

Recovery Services for Every Storage Device Class

When a backup comes too late, the lab handles every class of storage: SSD data recovery for NVMe and SATA drives, memory card data recovery for SD and CompactFlash, professional hard drive data recovery for mechanical and logical failures, and NAND flash chip-off recovery for BGA, TSOP and monolith packages. Browse all data recovery services →

5Rules from the founder
27+Years in data recovery
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Since 1999No Data, No Data Recovery Fee

What Our Customers Say

Rated 4.9 / 5 from 67 verified reviews on Trustpilot

"My SSD crashed on my laptop, but I had backed up my work to a USB flash drive, but then when I found the flash drive, the tip was snapped off! eProvided was able to get my data off of the flash drive and saved everything!" — Carter D. James, Trustpilot, March 2015
"This drive had both critical school and personal info on it. I contacted eProvided and within days they had recovered every bit of the data for me. These guys are awesome and saved both my school and me a lot of heartache." — David Wall, Trustpilot, November 2013
"Had a severely corrupted micro SD card with irreplaceable family photos. eProvided Data Recovery recovered the photos on this card. Bruce and his crew worked hard to recover our valuable pictures. Thanks Bruce and your crew. I highly recommend this company." — Richard S., Trustpilot, November 2025

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the first thing to do when a drive fails?
Stop. Do not write new data to the failed drive. New data can overwrite the files you want back.
Is a backup on the same drive enough?
No. Bruce’s first rule is to move the copy to a second device, because both devices are unlikely to fail at the same time.
What does eProvided charge if nothing can be recovered?
Nothing for the recovery. Bruce set the No Data, No Data Recovery Fee policy when he founded the company in 1999.

When the Advice Comes Too Late

No backup, and the only copy is on a device that failed? Stop using it and send it to the lab Bruce built. The evaluation is free.

Start My Free Evaluation

or call (866) 857-5950

✓ No Data, No Data Recovery Fee  ·  Since 1999  ·  Used by NASA & government  ·  Trustpilot 4.9
BC
Bruce Cullen
Founder & Certified Data Recovery Specialist

Bruce founded eProvided in 1999 and still works the bench in the Las Vegas lab, recovering data from hard drives, SSDs, phones, memory cards and flash media. The lab is used by NASA, the FBI and the U.S. Navy. Used by NASA and the FBI →

When the advice comes too late, these services pick up the case: