How much does data recovery cost?
This question is asked by most clients when there hard drive fails or crashes, and it is a valid one, however the answer is not straight forward as it may seem, and here are the reasons why.
All hard drive storage devices are unique to themselves only and as such the recovery and repair reflects this issue, there is not necessarily a fix all solution for data recovery purposes, each case is diagnosed on its own merits.
Each individual hard drive contains very unique and specific data about itself only, this data is locked away from normal use as it contains the operational structure of the hard drive any end user attempts here would destroy the data in an instant, specialist knowledge and equipment is required to access this vital area of the disk, even the printed circuit board contains special codes for itself only and are not designed to work with any hard drive.
Upon receiving a faulty hard drive for data recovery the fault or issue has to diagnosed correctly any incorrect diagnosis could destroy the data, for instance many hard drives can click or make scraping noises when they have failed and a client may decide to look at the failure themselves or allow a friend or colleague to look at the failed hard drive, this would be a mistake as their knowledge of hard drive failures are limited they may even resort to searching the internet for data recovery advice, such anecdotal stories of freezing hard drives are untrue and WILL DESTROY your hard drive and data.
In short our labs will ask you basic questions regarding your failed media and give you a price guide as to the cost, once the drive or failed media has been looked at by our labs then a firm quotation will be given to you, of course in the unlikely event that your data is not recoverable you would pay recovery fee whatsoever, you only pay the cost of a recovery if you are happy that your critical and precious data has been successfully recovered, this will be verified by the folder and file listing that will be emailed to you before any recovery cost is paid by you.
The recovery cost for a 500Gb hard drive starts at £295 + VAT at the current rate, this would be for a non clicking or damaged hard drive that did not require any clean room work and would be recovered on our 5-7 working business days turnaround, for faster recovery rates and physically damaged hard drives the cost would be emailed after the quotation and if you are not happy to proceed the hard drive will be returned to you at courier standard rates, typically £10-£20.
If you hard drive does have a filed component then we may ask you to cover this cost as a special order may be required to obtain the necessary parts to attempt the recovery.
RAID or sever data recovery cost can will be higher than a single hard drive as there is obviously far more work involved depending on the quantity of hard drives and the failure type, again this fee will be emailed to you before you make any commitment.