Our LDR quote price is based upon what will actually be required to recover your lost data. Below is a breakdown of the cost factors involved in our recovery process, including the cost of using donor parts, and how charging only after successful data recovery (as we do on most jobs) puts the “risk” at our bench.
Your actual number is written down after the free diagnostic has been done, never guessed at before it!
There are only three numbers to choose from for most people in Leeds because price follows device, not drama. A memory card or USB stick is £250 + VAT. A single hard drive or internal/external SSD (laptop/desktop) is £300 + VAT. A RAID array, NAS box or server is quoted on the job and starts at £500 + VAT, because multi-disk work is genuinely more work. All of those start with a free diagnostic and a fixed price, in writing; on most single-device jobs you won’t pay anything unless we succeed with the recovery. No hourly rate, no bill that grows once we’ve opened your drive.
These are the categories of service for most of the services we do. We have some exceptions (a badly burned circuit board, a broken card needing chip-level repairs, a multiple disk rebuild) in which case they will be priced higher than the prices above, and you will always know the exact price prior to us ever touching one of your sectors.
Mechanics: If there are any mechanical parts such as the head assemblies, motors or circuit boards that require replacement, then a compatible donor hard drive must be obtained and destroyed, which is a real cost that scales with how rare your model is. Time & expertise: Firmware repair and chip-level NAND repairs take several hours by specialised engineers; recovering data from good working hardware does not. Number of drives: When using a RAID configuration we must image each individual hard drive prior to beginning the array logic process; therefore 4 drives means 4 imaging sessions. Urgent service: Queue jumping is available at an additional fee, honestly priced as its own line. What is intentionally not included in pricing: the amount of storage space your drive has, what value your data represents to you, or how desperate you may be when calling us. To include either of the first two would be lazy; and the third would simply be predatory.
With a majority of jobs, there will be no pay for services unless we have your data to show for our work. This one term completely changes the way we approach each phase of the job: we can only provide accurate diagnostics (if we quote for something that has zero chance of working, we’re wasting our own bench time), the quotes need to reflect reality (when we have to go back for additional work, we lose, not you), and ultimately, the recovery needs to work or the work was done at no cost to you. This eliminates all questions about whether or not the work being performed is worth it: as long as the first diagnostic is free, and the charge is contingent upon successfully completing the recovery, you risk losing nothing but the price of postage to determine what your recovery will cost, and you decide based on actual numbers against your data’s actual value. A small percentage of jobs that incur an upfront fee for attempting to recover damaged equipment (i.e. severe physical damage; forensic analysis) will always be clearly identified in writing prior to any commitment from you; they will never be disclosed after the fact.
Many people are looking for a “cost per GB” for data recovery. We wanted to explain why you will never see that pricing model here. Pricing based on how many GBs you have is punitive and charges you based on the amount of space your drive has. While recovering 50GB and 5TB can be very different sizes, the actual work required to recover your data is virtually the same (same head swap, same image pass, same file system rebuild). Also, if we charged a per-GB fee for each successful recovery, then there would be an obvious perverse incentive: the more we recover, the more you pay; just the opposite of our business goal. Therefore, we price based on both the device type and the difficulty of the case. For example, two drives with vastly different capacities (a full 4 TB vs. a half-empty 500 GB) that require the exact same amount of time, effort and expertise to recover will be priced equally. So if another Leeds area company is quoting you by the gigabyte, please ask them what a full drive would come to before committing to their pricing plan; the total may end up being much more expensive than a single fixed price per device.
Sometimes, when the equipment is in good working condition and the data loss was logical (e.g., you accidentally deleted files or did a quick format), we will say that software is able to recover the lost data. However, when the disk has failed completely and it either makes clicking noises, hangs up, or does not appear at all, software recovery is often a waste of time and money: it can’t reach the fault, and its scanning stresses the failing mechanics. We offer a free consultation which will help determine whether your particular situation fits into one of our categories for recovering data.
The price is a form of multiplication, rather than markup. Each member hard drive (disk) in an array is individually imaged prior to virtual reconstruction and validation of the array as a whole, which means bench time for each individual hard drive. This four- to eight-hard-drive process requires more effort. The safe method of RAID recovery is the reason for the price associated with it.
We price our services honestly and compete on terms: free diagnostic, fixed written quote, in-house engineers, and in most cases you only pay us if we successfully recover your data. A cheaper headline that becomes an ‘evaluation fee’, an outsourced job, or a percentage of the monetary value of your lost data is not a lower-priced version of our product; it is a completely different product.
£300 + VAT, fixed; that is all inclusive for the cost of the recovery, which will cover either an internal or external drive on a laptop or a desktop, whatever the fault turns out to be. The price includes a complimentary diagnostic test as well as, on most jobs, no charge for the service unless we are successful in recovering your data.
Yes, our assessment is completely free. There is no obligation at all. We do the assessment, we tell you what’s wrong with it, how much can be recovered from it and give you a fixed price in writing for us to perform the recovery. If you don’t want to continue then there are no charges except for any return postage.
Most of our single-device recovery jobs are billed based on results (you only pay if we recover your data), with the few exceptions being clearly spelled out in writing at the beginning of each job. These exceptions include open drives (already physically accessed) or drives that have had previous attempts by someone else to restore data; and for multiple disk jobs and chip-level restoration, in many cases the actual attempt may be considered part of the labour. You will never discover an exception after the fact.
Because you are paying for things that software cannot accomplish (donor parts matching your specific drive, hours of data recovery on hardware designed to carefully read failing media, and specialised chip-level equipment used when there is no other method to access your data). The low cost of a generic “utility” or “data recovery tool” may be sufficient as long as the original drive remains operational. Once a drive begins to fail, this type of generic “utility” may end up being the most expensive thing you have ever run.
What is returned from each type of device, and what number it will start with. Continue on to any additional pages for complete pricing details and specific questions about your devices.
| Device | From | |
|---|---|---|
| Hard Drive | £300 | details → |
| SSD & NVMe | £300 | details → |
| USB Stick | £250 | details → |
| Memory Card | £250 | details → |
| External HDD | £300 | details → |
| Mac & MacBook | £300 | details → |
| RAID Array | £500 | details → |
| NAS Unit | £500 | details → |
| SAN | £1,250 | details → |
| Server | £500 | details → |
| Database | £500 | details → |
| Laptop & PC | £300 | details → |
| Virtual Machine | £800 | details → |
Internal or external, desktop or laptop, clicking or simply not detected, we will see if we can recover your data for a fixed fee of £300 + VAT. There’s no charge for diagnosis, a written quotation will be sent out prior to undertaking any work, and on most jobs you only pay when we’re successful. Once you have the quote, post your hard drive to us from anywhere within the UK, or you’re welcome to bring it along with no appointment required to our Leeds offices.
The same price of £300 + VAT as a single internal hard drive. This price also covers faults with the bridge board that are common in many external hard drives from WD, Seagate, and LaCie. In these cases it is the enclosure that dies instead of the disk, which is far more often than one would assume.
The cost of £300 + VAT will apply to all standard Mac and MacBook hard drives, Fusion Drives and APFS volumes, once the drive has been taken out of the Mac. Storage that is soldered to the logic board, as on T2 and Apple Silicon Macs, can’t be removed, so we can’t take on those jobs.
The cost of £300 + VAT will cover recovery from all types of solid state drive (SATA, M.2 & NVMe), including faulty controllers. All monolith or chip-off repairs are classified under “exceptions” and are therefore always written down to confirm pricing prior to being undertaken.
Starting at £500 + VAT and quoted to the job, the cost of data recovery from a RAID or NAS varies depending on how many drives there are and their condition when received, because every member disk is imaged individually.
£250 + VAT for all USB sticks as well as SD, microSD and CF memory cards. Sticks that have snapped off connectors and cards that require formatting also go into this category. Chip-level monolithic recovery is an exception band, therefore quoted first.
Don’t make an investment based on a guess. This is exactly why we do the diagnostic first and at zero cost: we turn a “guess” into a “named fault”, and a “named fault” into one fixed number (given to you in writing) prior to billing for one hour of time. Accept it or decline; no pressure. In most cases, if there’s no usable data recovered as a result of our investigation, you won’t be charged for our attempt. There is however one exception: deep physical work, i.e., when a drive has been opened on a bench, when working on CCTV or forensic type investigations, where significant specialist time will have already been incurred regardless of the quality of the final output. Therefore, in these instances, half of the fee will secure that specialist time upfront, with the remainder being invoiced upon receipt of the recovered data.
The cheapest data recovery service, honestly costed, can be easily identified. They will provide you with a free diagnostic, write down their price before work begins, and if the recovery cannot be completed, there is no charge. There are many hidden costs associated with this type of service: a “free” quote that becomes a fee to evaluate your media; a cheap piece of software running over a clicking hard drive (you may have turned what was going to be a successful £300 recovery into an unrecoverable one); and the low price given to entice you in. Those prices can go up after your disk has been opened. Our prices are shown above and do not change.
You do not need to be in Leeds to utilise our services. If you are from Sheffield, Bradford, or any other location throughout the United Kingdom, after receiving a quote for the recovery of your lost data, send us the device fully insured. We will then provide you with the free diagnostics, the same fixed quote and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data; much like walking through our door.
A price that is lower than all others will typically attract interest, but be prepared for costs to rise as soon as your hard drive has been opened up and taken apart. The most significant threat of failure is not the financial one: when a failing disk is attempted to be recovered using incorrect tools or with software that is too aggressive for its failing state, it may become impossible to recover all of your data before an expert even examines it. The likelihood of a second attempt being made after data loss due to improper recovery techniques is very low. The cost you should rely upon is the written quote you receive after proper diagnostic testing of your failed drive is completed, by a company that actually performs this work in-house, instead of sending your drive off-site to another company.
Ignore all of these estimates and then discover how much your particular job will cost: there are no fees for asking questions; there is just one fixed charge (if at all) for having the service; and you get to choose whether or not to use the service.