Six bands · none of them hidden
Data recovery prices, London. All six bands in print, and your own figure follows a free look, on paper.
All six numbers that this company runs on are listed on this page: a card or pen drive is £250 + VAT, one disk £300 + VAT, a recorder £400 + VAT, any item which holds a second disk from £500 + VAT, forensic instructions from £800 + VAT, and SAN and enterprise storage from £1,250 + VAT. If you look for that list on a rival website, you will usually see a contact form instead. It should only take you a moment to locate your own device on it, and finding out the precise cost will be free whichever part of the country the parcel is sent from. On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
The opening figure, by job.
| Band opens at | The sort of job | What falls inside that band |
|---|---|---|
| £250 plus VAT | Card and stick media | A flash device (SD, microSD, CompactFlash or USB pen drive) |
| £300 plus VAT | Just the one disk | Spinning disk, solid state disk (SSD) or NVMe stick: only the drive itself, not the laptop |
| £300 plus VAT | Apple, drive only | HFS+, APFS and FileVault; soldered storage devices (T2 and Apple silicon Macs) are not taken on. Ring first to check which type your device is |
| £400 plus VAT | Recorders, DVR and NVR | Recorder disks, not cameras: Hikvision, Dahua, Swann etc. |
| £500 plus VAT, and upwards | RAID sets, NAS and servers | Synology/QNAP/WD enclosures; ProLiant/PowerEdge/Lenovo machines; RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 |
| £500 plus VAT, and upwards | Databases, and mail stores | MySQL and PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Exchange |
| £800 plus VAT, and upwards | Datastores from virtual machines | Broken VM folders, and snapshot chains that refuse to resolve: VMDK/VHDX/VHD/QCOW2 |
| £800 plus VAT, and upwards | Forensic instructions, written up | Civil and employment matters with every step recorded as it happens |
| £1,250 plus VAT, and upwards | SANs and big arrays | One volume spanned over a number of arrays |
Is your own not listed above? One pass through our symptom checker will return three things at once: the band you fall into, what we think has gone wrong, and what not to touch before sending the device away!
Four things that go with the grid.
- Each price above includes no VAT; the standard rate is added on top.
- Treat them as opening figures rather than bills. We determine your final payment based upon the fault we find during diagnosis. Your final cost is put in writing for you immediately after the free diagnosis, and never after money changes hands.
- On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data.
- Half the fee up front on three sorts of work: forensic instructions, recorders and repair work using donor parts. These take hours and cost parts regardless of whether or not data was recovered. The balance of your bill follows later, when your files have been returned to you.
What shifts a figure within its band.
Once that figure has reached you.
| Where things stand | The usual reason for it | What you are charged |
|---|---|---|
| You take the figure | Benchwork starts at this price | Payable after reading the list of files |
| You turn the figure down | We will send the information from the investigation home with the device | Nothing, neither for the look nor for the postage home |
| Nothing is recovered | Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs | On most jobs, no invoice is raised |
| A further fault shows up | Benchwork pauses and you will receive a call before anything else continues | The price you agreed stands |
| Donor components, recorders and forensic work | Half as a deposit at the start, the remainder paid when your data is returned | Set out plainly beforehand |
| This device has been opened before by another company | The costs are quoted based upon the findings of the inspection alone | Pay-if-recovered terms may not apply |
What a £49 advertisement is really offering
- £49 gets you an evaluation of the problem(s) but never a recovery. All £49 will get you is a number in the queue and someone looking at your drive. The cost of recovering your files will come later, by which time they already have your drive on their bench, and requesting its return may be difficult. Here, this same stage is provided without cost, and if you choose not to accept a quote, we will post the drive home to you at our expense.
- Ask what a failure costs: where no document anywhere commits them to charging you only if they recover your files, there may be little reason for them to rush bad news towards you.
- Ask them: will your costs change? Ours do not. Everything we meet on our bench after you agree to proceed is absorbed at this end, and your invoice is merely a replication of the original quotation.
- Ask them: who physically opens your device? Many companies take a margin and send work forward to someone else. Whoever removes yours from its packaging here is the engineer who will perform work on it, and nobody else sees it in between.
Where a grid runs out of usefulness: these figures are intended literally. One hard disk with a logical fault, but no worse, is £300 + VAT, a price rather than an estimate, with nothing added on afterwards. The mechanical failure of a hard disk is the only area of uncertainty. No published list can indicate beforehand how many matching donor components are required for each individual hard disk. That determination is part of the purpose of the complimentary diagnostic process, and it is why the quoted price is provided in writing prior to doing any additional work.
The questions that come up first.
How much will it be?
Your band is determined by two things: what type of device it is, and how many disks reside within the device. Flash, such as a memory card or pen drive, is £250 + VAT. If there is only one disk involved and it is spinning or solid, and it is delivered separately from the iMac or laptop as the drive itself, then the base price for the service is £300 + VAT; storage soldered directly to the motherboard is not taken on, so if you are unsure which type of device you possess, please ring us first. A recorder is £400 + VAT. Add a second disk to the equation, such as a four-bay NAS, a rack server or a RAID set, and £500 + VAT is the starting point. Forensic instructions and virtual machine datastores start at £800 + VAT, and SAN and enterprise storage at £1,250 + VAT. The grid above displays the same information in less detail, and the complimentary diagnostic process converts a band into one specific figure on paper.
Is the first look chargeable?
No, and turning down your quote also costs nothing. The postage out to us is the only money you spend, and the cost of posting it back to your location will appear on our invoice rather than your own.
Do you ask for money before you begin?
Half of the original quoted price is due when you initiate the following types of project: a repair requiring donor components to be sourced and matched, a recorder whose disk drive is fixed inside the chassis, and forensic instructions of every kind. Each of these shares one common factor: regardless of success, the time and parts are always expended. When you receive the restored files from us, the balance of the payment is due. Every other type of project listed on this page operates in reverse, and on most of them, you only pay if we recover your data.
When does the invoice fall due?
Between two points in time. You review what was extracted from the damaged drive and confirm it appears correct, and only after confirming your satisfaction with the recovered data do we post out the new media containing your restored data. The terms governing our agreement provide for that sequence of events. During normal processing operations, nothing is asked of you when the drive arrives, and nothing at all while an engineer is working on it.
Does anything get added to the bill later?
No. The complimentary diagnostic evaluation carries no charge, we cover the cost of the postage back to you, and the invoice sent to you upon completion will say exactly what you agreed to. Priority handling is the only thing that can be added, however this requires a request from you to expedite your processing, and the cost will be quoted to you before you make any decision.
A rival has quoted less. What should I ask them?
There are three simple questions that can resolve it. First, when the drive is opened, will the final cost be exactly as quoted? Second, what is owed if the recovery fails? Third, whose bench actually does the work? We answer these questions as follows: yes; on most jobs you only pay if we recover your data; and the drive stays in this laboratory throughout.
That is the entire list. Yours arrives in writing after a free look.
Obtain a quotation prior to sending us your device, by filling in the form or by contacting us via telephone. Once you have your quote, you may then post your device to us at our Guildford intake lab, or drop it off there yourself, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment necessary). Either method is acceptable. The evaluation carries no charge, the price is always sent to you in writing, and ultimately it is up to you as to how you wish to proceed with the recovery of your data.