'Not detected' describes a £200 job and a £900 job equally well. Symptoms overlap almost completely across faults, and the fault is what you're paying to fix, so no figure given over the phone before anyone has examined the drive deserves your trust. The sequence that does deserve it is a free diagnostic, then one fixed quote in writing, then your decision with no pressure attached.
The examination establishes which of four tiers you're in. Logical: the hardware is fine but the organisation of the data isn't. Electronic: a failed circuit board or bridge. Firmware: the drive's own internal code has broken. Mechanical: heads or motor, and with them the head-swap bench. Cost rises tier by tier because parts, hours and equipment rise, and nothing else moves the number.
For orientation: logical jobs on healthy hardware generally cost in the low hundreds of pounds; board-level and firmware repairs sit in the middle hundreds; mechanical work with donor parts and head-swap bench time runs into the upper hundreds and can pass a thousand; and multi-disk RAID, NAS and server recoveries cost more than single drives, scaling with drive count and complexity. One figure from our own price list for calibration: a CCTV or DVR recorder recovery is £400 + VAT flat, forensic-class work that is paid upfront once you accept the fixed quote.
Ranges give you a sense of scale; they don't price your job. That's the whole purpose of the diagnostic, and a fixed quote moves the risk of surprises onto us: however awkward the fault turns out to be, the number you approved is the number you're invoiced.
The recurring tricks deserve naming. Headline prices 'from £49' that swell once the 'assessment' is done. Assessment fees that stick whether any data comes back or not. A standard tier slowed down on purpose so the express tier sells itself. Success defined so loosely that one readable file out of thousands triggers full payment.
Cut through it with three questions. One: is the diagnostic free even if I walk away, with my device returned? Two: once quoted, can the price change? Three: what counts as success, and are recovered files checked before I pay? Our answers, on the record: yes, free and returned; no, fixed means fixed; and success means the data you needed, checked. And our terms in one line: on logical recoveries, in most cases you only pay if we recover your data; drives with physical, electrical, water or fire damage pay 50% of the quote upfront for the invasive lab work, with the balance only if we recover your data; forensic-class jobs are paid upfront in full once you accept the fixed quote.
Three habits keep recovery bills down. Switch off early: a drive powered down at the first symptom is the cheap version of itself. Resist stacking tools: every scanning pass over failing hardware makes the eventual job bigger. Post rather than call someone out: tracked postage costs pounds, while call-out visits cost several times that.
Start with the free online diagnostic, or read the page for your hardware first: NAS, RAID, hard drives, SSDs and external drives.
A real price has three parts: a diagnostic that cost nothing, a quote that can't move, and on logical work, in most cases, paying only if we recover your data. Anything offering two of the three is a sales funnel, not a service.
The diagnostic is free, the quote is fixed, and on logical faults, in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Start online or ring the freephone.