Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Things You’ll Need:
- Legal advice
- Work sheet and/or invoice from computer store
How to sue a computer store that erases your hard drive
Step1
First off, you need to get legal advice because this is a contract issue and can be very complex. If you are going to sue the store, you can be sure that the store will have a contract lawyer to defend themselves.
Step2
You need to review the worksheet or invoice that you were given at the onset by the store when you left your computer with them. Some stores print very clearly on the front page that they will not be responsible if any data on your drive is accidentally erased as a result of a formatting procedure that they had to perform.
Step3
Other stores may not specify this because if you are a business, small or large, it would be assumed that you would have your entire drive on backup disk and that issue could form part of the defense.
Step4
If the store personnel told you not to worry, that you could leave your data on the drive because they are always careful, you will need to investigate the authority of that person versus the authority of the contract. Again, a lawyer could help you with the legalities of this issue.
Step5
You will have to calculate in dollars the value of the data lost and that can be very challenging. Again, a lawyer could help you to evaluate your damages.
Enthusiast 
Comments
Cloey said
on 1/13/2008 I agree with John the Expert. Everything on your computer needs to be backed up from word files to music to pictures. That way if it is necessary for the technician to completely reformat your computer, you haven't lost anything.
nanomatrix said
on 1/13/2008 I can't imagine someone taking legal actions for this type of incident. Data can be recovered from a format many times. People want to sue about everything the last 20 years... Consider the person your suing (i.e. a mom and pop store, or a franchise store) when you do this... As it says in the tips you should always backup your data, its very likely the computer problem was your fault, if they fix it you shouldn't go and sue them...