Most people want the cost prior to the lecture, which we've included below. The costs for logical work (where the hardware is faultless, i.e. deletion, corrupted file system etc.) are usually in the low hundreds of pounds. Costs for electronic and firmware repairs (the disks themselves may be good but their circuit boards or firmware may not) are mid-range, generally in the middle hundreds. Costs associated with mechanical recovery (a disk being physically opened on the head-swap bench, heads swapped, donor components identified and used) can range from the upper hundreds to over a thousand pounds depending on the size/complexity of the job. Costs for RAID/NAS/server work tend to exceed those for individual units, and increase based upon both the number of disks involved as well as how damaged they are when received. A fixed example price directly off our own pricing list: a CCTV/DVR recorder is £400 + VAT, forensic work, paid in full as soon as you agree to the fixed quoted price.
Those bands are there to tell you what is going on in terms of pricing for your data recovery; they will not determine how much your data recovery will be, and if someone has determined how much your service will be based solely off a description given over the telephone, then that person is basing their determination off a guess with your money. What we do instead is the way that most firms that provide quality data recovery services perform diagnostics: the diagnostic process costs nothing, it takes no longer than 2 working days once the drive arrives with us, and once it is completed, it results in one fixed price quote that does not move afterwards. If you were looking for a hard drive recovery Norwich cost and were able to find a provider that quoted an amount before anyone had reviewed your drive, then that was simply a pre-determined amount set so as to get your drive placed in a box, rather than a true estimate of the time and expense involved in recovering your data.
'It isn't detected' is a four-word phrase that can cover £200 for a small job and £900 for a large one. That's precisely why symptoms cannot be used as prices. The issue causing the problem is what determines the price. There are four levels of these issues. Logical: the hardware (boards etc.) works fine, but the way your files and data are organised doesn't. Electronic: a board died on the hard drive; a bridge died on the hard drive; the power section on the hard drive is dead. Firmware: the firmware (the drive's internal program) has crashed; this requires a device capable of communicating with the hard disk below the level an operating system ever reaches. Mechanical: the head or motor is bad. This means we need to swap out the heads on the head-swap bench, with matched donor parts, plus many man-hours to complete.
The figure increases as it moves from one tier to the next since the parts, the hours and the equipment increase with each tier. There is nothing else truthful or acceptable for an estimate to increase. Knowing the four tiers allows you to ask a difficult and beneficial question when someone quotes you their price: at which level does your quote belong, and what did you see in order to place it at that particular level. If a hard drive data recovery service cost can't be explained by those two questions then it is not really a quotation for a service, it is a negotiating stance.
These games are worth naming so you can spot them at first glance. "From £49" headline prices that will escalate once an "assessment" is carried out. Assessment fees you'll have to pay even if no files come back. Standard services that are intentionally run slow enough that customers will want to upgrade to the fast version (express) for themselves. And as much leeway as possible in defining what constitutes "success", so one readable file in every ten thousand counts as success and they're charging you in full.
Three key questions cut through all of it. What happens to the diagnostic when you turn down the job, and do you get the drive back? After a price has been given, is that price going to go up or down? And how is "success" defined: will you see the recovered files checked before paying for them? Here are those answers in writing, so they can't be forgotten. It remains free and the drive goes home; no, a fixed figure is fixed; success means the files you named, opened and confirmed. The rate in a single line: on logical work, you only pay if we recover your data; a drive damaged by an electrical failure, fire or water, or a drop or impact pays 50% of the price before invasive work begins (the remaining 50% is only charged should recovery be successful); forensic work, which includes ransomware, CCTV and BitLocker cases, is paid upfront once you accept the fixed quote.
Three habits guarantee a reduction in the recovery cost. Switch off early. Switch the drive off at the first unknown noise, while it is as cheap as it can ever be; the same drive will be expensive after two weeks of hopefully trying to recover it. Avoid adding multiple pieces of software, as each nightly scan of weary hardware makes the work that engineers have to undertake worse, and some of these tools write to the disk while claiming they do not. When you want to obtain a quote simply use the telephone or the completely free online diagnostic. Once you have obtained your quote, send the drive via tracked, insured post. It will cost a few pounds for postage. There is no collection service, so sending the drive does not cost anything else. The drive will arrive on our bench the next working day regardless of where you are based in Norfolk.
Another one for the students. UEA hands out deadlines all at once, and the packages that follow are delivered to us in bulk as well. Usually there will be a dissertation of some sort on a 4 year old external hard drive (which will likely have been dropped once or twice). If you care about the work then the best value insurance would be to make sure you have a duplicate of it somewhere other than on the same physical device as the original. Or try the free diagnostic first, or go through the pages for your own equipment first: hard drives, SSDs, external drives, RAID and NAS.
An honest price stands on three legs: a free diagnostic, a quote that does not change after being given to you, and on logical work, you only pay if we recover your data. Any recovery service offering two of the above is a funnel in a lab coat.
Free diagnostic inside 2 working days of arrival and a fixed quote; on logical faults you only pay if we recover your data. Start online or ring the freephone now.