Data recovery questions and answers

A first consultation is free. A cleanroom diagnostic is £79 + VAT. Deleted files on a standard hard drive start at £99 + VAT, physical recovery of a single drive is £450 + VAT plus any donor drive, SSD repairs are £450–£650 + VAT and RAID starts at £650 + VAT. See the full price list.

Yes. Customers in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland post or courier their drive to our London lab. Londoners can also drop off by appointment. See how to send a drive.

No. If a drive clicks, beeps, buzzes or isn't recognised, switch it off. Repeated power-ons and recovery software can turn a recoverable fault into permanent platter damage.

Yes. Devices and recovered data are handled only by our engineers for the purpose of the recovery and are never shared. See our privacy notice.

We discuss the symptoms, tell you whether the fault looks physical or logical, the best recovery method and the likely price band. It doesn't include opening the drive in the cleanroom or attempting recovery.

For physical faults we inspect the drive in the cleanroom for £79 + VAT. That tells us exactly what has failed and which parts are needed, so we can confirm a fixed quote.

A donor drive is an identical model we take replacement heads or electronics from. We send you a link to buy the right one from donordrives.com. If you'd like us to buy it for you, there's a 30% mark-up plus any import charges and VAT.

We copy recovered files to an external drive. You can supply one, or buy one from us at the current market price. It is returned by tracked delivery or collected from the lab.

Often, yes. Don't dry it out with heat or power it on. Seal it in a bag and contact us so we can advise before you post it.

Yes. We recover servers, RAID arrays and NAS systems for businesses across the UK and can invoice your company. Choose "Urgent, business critical" on the form if downtime is costing you money.