Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) today announced Seagate Rescue™ and Seagate Rescue and Replace™ data protection plans offering coverage starting at $29.99. Seagate is the first storage solutions provider to offer a complete protection plan that covers drive replacement and data recovery services for data that is contained on the drive. The plans offer coverage for nearly any brand of internal or external hard disk drive or solid-state drive. This first-of-its-kind data protection plan covers data recovery services for data that may have been lost due to physical damage, corruption or accidental deletion at a fraction of the cost of data recovery services purchased after the event. The protection plan will be the first to be offered on a global scale following launches in Canada and Europe later this year and throughout the Asia Pacific region in mid-2014.

“Seagate is very much aware of the level of trust our customers are putting in us by placing their data on our drives. We always advocate backing up, but there may be times when those photos, videos and data might not have made it to a duplicate copy before something goes wrong,” said Scott Horn, vice president of marketing for Seagate. “These new data protection plans offer an easy and user-friendly method of helping consumers manage the challenging experience of the potential loss of their most important files, data and memories. We provide peace of mind for those unforeseen events that might damage a drive or its contents.”

Today, most everything is stored in an electronic format on a hard drive. From an archived music library, to family photos and video, those moments captured are keepsakes that cannot be captured again if lost. The hard cost of recovering data from a damaged or corrupted drive can reach into the thousands of dollars, where highly skilled technicians must manually disassemble the drive and recover the data bit by bit. Being able to receive data recovery services and also get a replacement drive at an up-front nominal fee provides an option to avoid the high cost of data recovery services.

“Data recovery is often a missing element in personal storage devices,” said Liz Conner, Sr. Research Analyst for Personal and Entry Level Storage at IDC. “Traditionally these devices have focused on providing data back-up or additional capacity to PCs, offering little to no options in the event of a storage failure. Seagate’s Rescue plan presents end users with peace of mind in the unlikely and unforeseeable event of device damage, drive/file corruption, or accidental file deletion.”

The service will first be made available through Seagate.com and will later be able to be purchased from retail and manufacture partners at the time one purchases a computer, external storage or NAS. The Seagate Rescue™ plans come in 2-year, $29.99; 3-year, $39.99; and 4-year, $49.99 MSRP packages. The plan for Seagate Rescue and Replace™, where the data is restored and a new drive is provided, has 2-, 3- and 4-year offerings, for: $39.99, $49.99 and $59.99 MSRP, respectively.