Two hard drives can have identical problems, but it could be an hour's work or a full week of head-swap bench labour. The price depends on where the problem lies, and that stays unknown until the drive has been opened and examined; this is why no business should give you a set price without viewing your device first, as they're just guessing. It is also why our model, like the honest end of the trade, is a free diagnostic followed by a single fixed quote, which you are free to take or leave.
What the diagnostic does is identify whether the drive failed logically (files were deleted and/or there was some form of data corruption on an otherwise good drive), electronically (the PCB/USB bridge), through firmware, or mechanically (the heads/motor, squarely head-swap bench territory). As you move up each level you'll require more components, more hours and more specialised equipment, and this is exactly what your money buys.
In general across the entire UK marketplace, a basic logical recovery (deleted files or a corrupt file system on a good drive) will cost in the low hundreds. Electronic and firmware faults land in the mid hundreds. Mechanical faults requiring spare parts and head-swap bench work generally cost from the mid hundreds up towards a thousand. Jobs involving multiple drives within RAID, NAS or server systems are typically going to be higher still, and quoted based upon difficulty. For one fixed reference point, our CCTV/DVR recorder recoveries are a flat £400 plus VAT.
Use them as an approximate guide rather than a menu, since the whole idea behind a free diagnosis is to give you your figure for your fault, prior to spending any money. With a fixed quote agreed, we take responsibility for any unpleasant surprises: if the work proves harder than initially assessed, you still pay the price you approved.
Most of the reasons why the industry has such a bad reputation relate to a few common practices: the initial "headline" rate (e.g., "Recovery from just £49!") that increases after the "assessment" is done; the "assessment fee" you never get back, whether your data is recovered or not; an artificially constructed urgency tier, where normal services are throttled back to push the "express" service; and success fees so vague that recovering any files at all, regardless of readability, results in you paying the full invoice.
There are three simple questions that will immediately help you cut through this issue: Is there no charge for the diagnostic, including returning your device to you if you decide not to proceed? Is the quote fixed once it is issued? What constitutes a successful recovery of your data, i.e. does the company verify the files recovered before charging you? A serious data recovery laboratory will answer these three questions without hesitation. In most instances you only pay if we recover your data, and by "recover," we mean the actual files you need, checked and verified, never a technicality.
Act fast: a clicking drive switched off at the first click is a cheaper job than one that has been retried for a week. In addition, each attempt to use recovery tools on a failing hard drive will add hours to the eventual professional job, and failed software passes are the most common way a cheap job turns expensive. After you receive a quote over the telephone or from the free online diagnostic, post the hardware in instead of paying for a technician to travel to your location; postage is easily the cheapest part of the whole process.
Begin with the free online diagnostic, or begin reading about your hardware: hard disks, solid state drives, external hard drives, network attached storage & RAID arrays.
The only number you should consider is a fixed-price quotation for your specific problem. Free diagnostic → fixed-price quote → you only pay if we recover your data. If any one of these three is missing from an offer, keep searching.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.