The lab · what it costs
Nothing hidden on price. Yours goes in writing first.
The bottom of our scale is £250 + VAT. Every band above it is printed further down this page — you don't have to ring to prise a number out of us. Working out which band your device falls into is free, and on most work the bill only arrives if the files do.
Run the problem past an engineer
0800 6890668
The bands in full.
| From | Kind of work | Included in the band |
|---|---|---|
| £250 + VAT | Cards and USB sticks | SD, microSD and CF cards, plus USB flash drives |
| £300 + VAT | Any single drive | Internal or external HDD, SSD and NVMe, desktop or laptop |
| £300 + VAT | Apple Macs & MacBooks | Apple Silicon and T2, FileVault, APFS and HFS+ |
| £400 + VAT | DVR / NVR / CCTV | Embedded recorders: Swann, Dahua, Hikvision and the rest |
| from £500 + VAT | Servers, NAS and RAID | Synology, QNAP, WD, Dell, HP and Lenovo; RAID 0/1/5/6/10 |
| from £500 + VAT | Databases and mail stores | MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server and Exchange |
| £800 + VAT upwards | VM images | Broken VM folders and snapshots — VMDK, VHDX, VHD, QCOW2 |
| £800 + VAT upwards | Investigations and forensics | HR matters and reports fit for court, chain of custody intact |
| from £1,250 + VAT | Enterprise SAN storage | Storage pools that cross several arrays |
Can't tell which row is yours? The free diagnostic answers all three questions: the band, the likely fault, the next step.
Reading the table properly.
- Every figure above excludes VAT, which is charged at the standard UK rate.
- Each one is a floor, not a final bill. What failed sets the real number. It is written down once the free diagnosis is done, and before any chargeable work begins.
- Most jobs carry no fix, no fee. Should the files you were after fail to come back, you pay nothing for the attempt.
- A 50% deposit applies to three job types: recorder work, forensic instructions, and repairs needing donor parts fitted inside the drive. Each burns the same bench hours whether it works or not. The remaining half falls due only when your data reaches you.
Where inside a band your price lands.
After the quote: every outcome.
| The situation | What's behind it | The cost to you |
|---|---|---|
| You accept | Work begins at the figure quoted | Due after you check the file listing |
| You decline | Device goes back, findings included | Nothing for the diagnosis, nothing for the return post |
| Recovery fails | Most jobs sit under no fix, no fee | Nothing to pay for the attempt |
| A surprise turns up mid-job | We pause and phone before carrying on | Your figure stays put |
| Mechanical, recorder or forensic jobs | Half now, half when it works | Set out before you commit |
| Someone opened the drive first | Priced case by case once inspected | The usual guarantee may not hold |
Cheap headline prices rarely stay cheap
- A £49 headline is a hook, not a quote — it exists to get the drive onto their bench. The genuine number turns up once the case is open, at the point where backing out is hardest.
- Ask what a failed job costs — where no fix, no fee is absent, nobody at that lab gains anything by ringing you quickly with bad news.
- Ask whether an agreed price can rise — ours cannot. Anything awkward that surfaces after you sign off is ours to swallow. The total you approved is the total.
- Ask where the work is really done — a fair number of firms are middlemen who mark up the job and post it elsewhere. Nothing of ours goes out of the lab.
Straight talk about published prices: take the figures here literally. A logical fault on one hard disk is £300 + VAT — not about £300. No table can say in advance whether the job takes one donor part or three of them. Diagnosis answers that, and it is the reason your final number reaches paper before a single screw comes out.
The questions we get asked most, answered plainly.
What does data recovery cost?
Memory cards and USB sticks open the scale at £250 + VAT. One drive on its own — SSD, hard disk, Mac or laptop — comes in at £300 + VAT, and a recorder at £400 + VAT. Anything holding several disks, RAID and NAS boxes and servers alike, opens at £500 + VAT, and the £800 + VAT band covers virtual machines and forensic instructions. All of it is set out in the table above; your own figure is written down once the free diagnosis is complete.
Is diagnosis genuinely free?
Yes — that holds even when you turn the quote down. The one thing you pay for is getting the device to us; the return journey is ours.
Why do some jobs need money up front?
A few kinds of work cost us the same either way: drive repairs that need matched donor parts, recorder jobs, and forensic instructions. Each of those carries a 50% deposit at the start, with the balance due once your data is back. Everything else runs strictly on no fix, no fee.
At what point do I pay?
Payment falls after you have signed off the file list and before the data is released, exactly as the terms say. A standard job asks for nothing up front and nothing mid-way.
Any shocks on the invoice?
There aren't any. Diagnosis costs nothing, return postage is on us, and whatever price you sign off is what you pay. Priority handling is the sole add-on, and it is quoted before you agree to anything.
What if I've a cheaper quote?
Ask the cheaper firm three things. Does the quote survive the drive being opened? What is the bill if nothing comes back? Is the lab their own? Ours holds, ours is nothing, and ours is our own.
The bands are on this page. Your own figure costs nothing to get.
Send the form or send the drive. The diagnosis costs nothing, the price is put in writing, and the next move is yours.