Two drives with the exact same symptoms can be an hour's work in one case and a week of clean-room labour in the next. Price tracks the fault, and the fault stays unknown until the drive is opened and examined — which is why any company quoting a firm figure before seeing your device is simply guessing, and why our model (like the honest end of the trade) is a free diagnostic first, then one fixed quote you are free to take or leave.
What that diagnostic settles: is the failure logical (deleted files or corruption on an otherwise healthy drive), electronic (PCB or USB bridge), firmware-related, or mechanical (heads or motor — squarely clean-room territory)? Each rung up that ladder brings more parts, more hours and more specialist kit, and that is what your money pays for.
Across the UK market, a straightforward logical recovery (deleted files or a corrupted file system on a healthy drive) usually sits in the low hundreds. Electronic and firmware faults land in the mid hundreds. Mechanical failures that need donor parts and clean-room time tend to run from the mid hundreds up towards a thousand, while multi-drive RAID, NAS and server jobs go above that, priced on complexity. For one fixed reference point, our CCTV/DVR recorder recoveries are a flat £400 + VAT.
Take those as a rough compass, not a menu — the whole point of a free diagnostic is that you get your figure, for your fault, before parting with a penny. Once a fixed quote is agreed, any nasty surprises are ours to absorb: if the job turns out tougher than assessed, you still pay the price you approved.
The industry's reputation problem comes down to a handful of familiar moves: the bargain headline rate ('recovery from £49!') that swells once the 'assessment' is done; the assessment fee you never get back, recovered data or not; the manufactured urgency tier, where the standard service is quietly throttled to push the express one; and success fees written so vaguely that recovering any file at all — readable or not — triggers the full bill.
Three questions cut straight through it: Is the diagnostic genuinely free, including the device coming back to you if you decline? Is the quote fixed once it is given? And what exactly counts as a successful recovery — do they verify the recovered files before you pay? A serious lab answers all three without flinching. Under our no fix, no fee policy, 'fix' means the data you actually needed, checked and verified — never a technicality.
Act early: a clicking drive switched off at the first click is a cheaper job than one that has been retried for a week. Don't stack up DIY attempts either — every recovery tool run against a failing drive adds hours to the eventual professional job, and failed software passes are the most common way a cheap job turns expensive. And post the device in rather than paying for an on-site visit — postage is easily the cheapest part of the whole business.
Start with the free online diagnostic, or read up on your device: hard drives, SSDs, external drives, NAS and RAID.
The only figure that counts is a fixed quote for your actual fault. Free diagnostic → fixed price → no fix, no fee. If any one of those three is missing from an offer, keep looking.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee — start now or call the freephone.