Everybody asks us when they enquire – how much will it be and its pretty much impossible to say until we have seen the hard drive. Like a car that has broken down, you would never phone a garage and say “I don’t know what’s wrong with my car but how much will it cost to repair?”


There are so many things that can go wrong with a hard drive, from a few bad sectors at the bottom of the scale, up to a seized motor at the higher end. Whilst it might only take a couple of hours to isolate and bypass some bad sectors, it could be weeks to recover data from a catastrophic mechanical failure.

Whilst our engineers maybe able to guess at a likely amount depending on the symptoms, it is only that – a guess. Generally we try not to quote on the phone unless really pushed by a client, for fear of being wrong. Of course, much of the time we will be wrong and this does nothing to appease our client.

If your data is only worth £100, it may be worth sending it in for a quote but the chances of success at that price are around 3%. So don’t be surprised if the quote we provide is more. At the end of the day it is just a quote and unlike many of our competitors, we do not charge a diagnosis fee. In order to provide a quote we have completed the data recovery and hence, make a huge loss on every client that declines our quote.

When we averaged the typical charges for a hard drive data recovery last year, the price was £395.00 + VAT. Of course some were significantly less and many were significantly more. This does not take into account a small percentage of jobs, where we need to purchase parts before attempting a recovery. Although we have over fourteen thousand parts in our library, if we need specific donors spare, we do ask that these costs are covered before attempting a recovery. Nevertheless this is a voluntary contribution and if the client does not want to pay, there is no obligation.

So if you are phoning for a quote, it might be worth asking for a typical price banding, based on the make, model and types of failure of your hard drive.