Published rather than quoted case by case, so you can check ours against anyone else’s. Four things set the price and the amount of data is not one of them — recovering 40GB and 4TB from the same failed drive is the same work.
The precise figure lands in writing once the free diagnostic is finished — and never ahead of it. Every price on this page excludes VAT.
Worth knowing, because it explains why quotes across the industry vary so widely.
All plus VAT, fixed in writing after a free 48-hour diagnostic.
£250 — memory cards and USB sticks
£300 — single hard drives, SSDs and NVMe, laptops, desktops, external drives, and Macs with removable storage
£550 flat — Fusion Drive Macs, because that is two devices recovered and recombined into one volume
from £500 — RAID arrays, NAS units, servers and databases
£800 flat — BitLocker-encrypted drives, and CCTV, DVR or NVR footage
from £800 — virtual machines and forensic examination
from £1,250 — enterprise SAN, quoted after scoping
These are the same figures we quote on the phone and the same ones on every service page. If a quote you have been given elsewhere is dramatically lower, it is worth asking what happens to it once the drive is opened.
Stated precisely rather than as a slogan.
On most work, if we cannot recover your data you pay nothing at all. The diagnostic is free, and a failed recovery produces no invoice.
Where physical drive-level work is needed — opening a drive under filtered air, fitting donor parts, component-level board repair — there is a 50% deposit, because those costs are committed the moment work starts whatever the platters turn out to look like. The balance is payable only on success.
Three services sit outside no fix, no fee entirely: forensic examination, where establishing that nothing improper happened is a legitimate and valuable result; CCTV and DVR recovery, where reverse-engineering the format takes the same days whether or not your window survived the overwrite loop; and data destruction, where the work is the outcome. You are told which applies before committing.
Not accusations — just things worth asking about before you send a drive anywhere.
A quote that can change once it is open. Common, and it means you are committing without knowing the cost. Ask whether the figure is fixed. Ours is, and it does not move.
A percentage of what is recovered. This gives a firm an interest in your data’s value and in you believing recovery is possible. Both point the wrong way.
A charge to look at it. A diagnostic fee means paying to be told whether you can be helped. Ours is free and there is no obligation attached — including when the answer is that you should go and do it yourself with free software.
The questions about price that come up the most.
From £250 plus VAT for cards and USB media, £300 for a single drive, SSD, laptop or Mac with removable storage, £550 flat for a Fusion Drive, from £500 for RAID and servers, £800 flat for BitLocker and CCTV, and from £1,250 for enterprise SAN.
No. Recovering 40GB or 4TB from the same failed drive is the same work. Pricing by volume recovered is pricing by what you stand to lose rather than by what the job actually involves.
Yes — one figure agreed in writing after the free diagnostic, and it does not change afterwards. If something unexpected emerges we come back to you rather than proceeding and invoicing.
On most work, no recovery means no charge at all. Physical drive-level work takes a 50% deposit because donor parts and clean-air time are committed up front, with the balance only on success. Forensic, CCTV and data destruction sit outside it entirely.
Yes, with no obligation. You get a written answer on what failed, what is realistically recoverable and one fixed price. If the honest answer is that free software would do it, you get that instead of a quote.
Usually because they are not fixed. A low figure that rises once the drive is opened is a common pattern — worth asking directly whether the price you have been given can change.
Begin with a free written diagnostic. We'll pin down exactly what can be brought back and what it'll cost — then the decision is yours. Drop your device in at Manchester, or post it over fully insured.