The honest answer: most jobs land between £250 and £800 +VAT, and you’ll always have a fixed written price before any chargeable work — not an hourly rate, and no fix, no fee on the majority of recoveries. Here’s the full breakdown, what moves the number up or down, and why the £99 software isn’t the bargain it looks.
Price follows the device and the type of failure, not how much data you need back. A memory card is fixed; a multi-disk server is quoted. Either way you see the number before you commit.
What we charge by device and system — all plus VAT, all fixed in writing after the diagnostic.
A flat price means a flat price: a hard drive that turns out to have a physical or firmware fault is still £300 +VAT, not a surprise upgrade. The bands that read “from” — RAID, NAS, virtual machines, enterprise storage — are the ones where the work genuinely varies with the number of disks, the array type and the capacity, so those get a specific written figure once we’ve seen the system. Full detail lives on our data recovery cost and pricing pages.
Four things decide where a job lands — and, notably, the amount of data isn’t one of them.
The device and system. This is the biggest factor. A single drive or memory card is a fixed price; a RAID array or server means imaging several disks and rebuilding the array, which is why those start higher.
The type of failure. A logical problem — deleted files, a formatted or corrupt file system — is the most straightforward. A physical fault (a failed head, a burnt board) needs clean-room work and donor parts. A firmware fault needs specialist tools. Encryption (BitLocker) adds a fixed step. Our bands already account for this, so it rarely changes the headline figure — it mostly affects whether a deposit toward parts applies.
Donor parts. A physical recovery often needs a matching donor drive — bought purely for its heads or board. That’s where the 50% deposit on physical and forensic jobs goes: toward parts and bench time, not profit.
Not the capacity. Recovering 500 GB or 5 TB from the same failed drive is the same job and the same price. You’re paying for the recovery, not per gigabyte.
Free to find out, fixed to proceed, and on most jobs nothing to pay if it can’t be done.
It runs in three simple steps. First, a free diagnostic — you send the drive in or drop it off, and we find out exactly what’s failed and what can be recovered, at no charge and no obligation, usually within 48 hours. Second, a fixed written quote — your price for the job, agreed before anything chargeable happens. Third, the recovery: on the majority of jobs, if we can’t get your data back, you don’t pay the recovery fee.
The exceptions are narrow and always agreed up front: physical, CCTV and forensic recoveries carry a 50% deposit toward donor parts and bench time, because those costs are real whether or not the recovery ultimately succeeds. Everything is in writing before we start, so nothing on the final invoice is a surprise.
Sometimes DIY is fine. On a failing drive, it’s how recoverable data becomes lost data.
Recovery software only addresses logical loss on a healthy drive — deleted files, a quick-formatted card. If that’s your situation and the drive is mechanically sound, a reputable tool may well get your files back, and we’ll happily tell you so rather than take a job you don’t need. Our own guides on recovering deleted files cover when that’s safe.
The danger is running software on a drive that is actually failing. Every scan spins a struggling drive for hours and writes to it; a clicking drive dragged through repeated attempts can score its own platters, and a “£99 fixed everything” service that images carelessly can turn a straightforward recovery into an impossible one. If a drive is clicking, grinding, undetected or was dropped or flooded, the cheapest thing you can do is stop — power it down and get an honest diagnostic. A fixed, no-fix-no-fee quote from a lab that works read-only is not the expensive option; it’s the one that protects the data.
Most jobs fall between £250 and £800 +VAT. As a guide: USB sticks and memory cards £250; single hard drives, SSDs, laptops and external drives £300; RAID, NAS and servers from £500; BitLocker and CCTV systems £800; and SAN or enterprise storage from £1,250 — all plus VAT, as a fixed written quote after a free diagnostic.
On most jobs, no — no fix, no fee. A small number of specialist jobs (physical, CCTV and forensic work) carry a 50% deposit toward donor parts and bench time, which we always agree with you in writing first. The diagnostic itself is free either way.
A single hard drive, SSD, laptop or external drive is £300 +VAT; a USB stick or memory card is £250 +VAT. That’s a flat price for the device — a physical or firmware fault doesn’t change the quote — confirmed in writing after the free diagnostic.
RAID arrays, NAS units, servers and databases start from £500 +VAT. The exact figure depends on the number of disks, the RAID level and the capacity, and virtual machines or SAN and enterprise storage sit higher — from £800 and £1,250 respectively. You get a fixed written quote before any chargeable work.
Recovery software only helps with logical problems on a healthy drive; it can do nothing for a physical or firmware failure, and running it on a failing drive often makes things worse. The price of professional recovery reflects clean-room work, a donor-parts library, hardware imagers and engineer time — and it’s quoted as a fixed price, no fix no fee on most jobs, so you’re not paying for a gamble.
Yes — the diagnostic is free, typically completed within 48 hours, and you get a fixed written quote before any chargeable work begins. You only pay once you approve the quote, and on most jobs only if the recovery succeeds.
Tell us the device and what’s happened, or send it in for a free diagnostic — you’ll have a fixed written quote before any money changes hands, and no fix, no fee on most jobs.