Every band · nothing withheld
Nottingham data recovery prices. Every band is printed here; yours goes in writing after a free look.
Five numbers run this Nottingham business and all five are printed here: cards and sticks £250 + VAT, a single drive £300 + VAT, a recorder £400 + VAT, anything with a second disk in it from £500 + VAT, forensic work from £800 + VAT. Go looking for that list on a competitor's site and what you generally find is a contact form. Placing your own device takes seconds, arriving at the exact figure costs nothing wherever the parcel starts, and where a recovery does not succeed most jobs are never invoiced at all.
Ask an engineer, and the first look is free
0115 8220606
The opening price for data recovery, job by job.
| Band starts | What kind of job | What the band takes in |
|---|---|---|
| £250 + VAT | Cards and sticks | SD, microSD, CompactFlash, USB sticks — flash of any sort |
| £300 + VAT | One disk on its own | A hard disk, an SSD or an NVMe module — loose, or still fitted in the laptop |
| £300 + VAT | Any Apple machine | APFS and FileVault, HFS+, T2 chips, Apple silicon |
| £400 + VAT | DVR and NVR recorders | The recorder itself rather than the cameras — Hikvision, Dahua, Swann and the others |
| £500 + VAT and upwards | Servers, RAID and NAS | Synology, QNAP and WD enclosures; Lenovo, ProLiant and PowerEdge servers; RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 |
| £500 + VAT and upwards | Databases and mailboxes | Exchange, SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL |
| £800 + VAT and upwards | Virtual machine datastores | VM folders damaged, and snapshot chains that will not resolve: VMDK, VHDX, VHD and QCOW2 |
| £800 + VAT and upwards | Forensic instructions and reports | Employment and civil matters written up, with every step logged |
| £1,250 + VAT and upwards | Large arrays and SANs | A single volume striped over more than one array |
Something else entirely? Three answers come out of the symptom checker in one pass: your band, the likeliest fault, and what must not be done to the device before it is packed.
Four notes that belong with it.
- VAT is excluded from every figure above; the standard UK rate is added to it.
- Read them as opening figures, not as bills. Whichever fault turns up decides what you actually pay, and that number is put in writing when the free diagnosis ends — always before a penny is charged.
- Where the data does not return, most jobs carry no fee. Nothing is owed for an attempt that fails.
- Half up front on three job types: forensic instructions, recorders, and repairs that fit donor components into a drive. All three spend hours and parts whatever happens. You settle the rest once the data is back with you.
What moves the figure inside a band.
What happens after the figure arrives.
| Where you stand | What usually causes it | The charge to you |
|---|---|---|
| You agree to it | The bench begins at that figure | Due after you have read the file list |
| You decline the figure | It comes back to you with the findings | Nothing owed at all — neither for the look nor the return postage |
| No data comes off it | On most work, no fee where the data does not come back | There is nothing to pay |
| A second fault comes to light | The bench stops and you get a phone call first | The quoted figure does not move |
| Donor components, recorders, forensics | Half at the outset, half once it works | Spelled out before you say yes |
| Somebody else has been inside it | Priced individually once we have looked | No-fee cover may not hold |
What the £49 advertisements are actually selling
- £49 pays for a diagnosis, never for a recovery — what it buys is a slot in a queue and somebody's eyes on your drive. The recovery price lands afterwards, and by then the drive is on their bench and asking for it back has become awkward. That same stage costs nothing here, and a quote you turn down sends the drive home at our expense.
- Ask what failure costs — if no document anywhere promises that a failed job is free of charge, nobody has much incentive to bring you bad news quickly.
- Ask whether the number can change — this one does not. Whatever the bench meets after you have said yes is ours to absorb, and the invoice reads exactly as the quote did.
- Ask who will physically open it — plenty of firms add a margin and send the drive on to somebody else. The engineers who take yours out of the box here are the ones who work on it, and it reaches no third party in between.
Where a table stops being useful: the numbers are meant literally. Nothing worse than a logical fault, on one hard disk, and the job is £300 + VAT — a price, not an estimate, with nothing added later. Mechanical failure is the single unknown, since no published grid can tell you in advance how many donor components will have to be matched to a particular drive. Settling that is precisely what the free diagnosis is for, which is why your figure is on paper before any work begins.
What people ask before anything else.
What will it cost me?
Two things fix your band: how many disks are inside, and what the device is. Flash of any description — memory card, pen drive — is £250 + VAT. Where one disk and one only is involved, spinning or solid, loose or still screwed into an iMac or a laptop, the figure is £300 + VAT. A recorder costs £400 + VAT. Add a second disk — four-bay NAS, rack server, RAID set — and £500 + VAT is where you begin. Forensic instructions start at £800 + VAT, as do virtual machine datastores. The grid above says all of this in fewer words, and the free diagnosis turns your band into one number on paper.
Does the first look cost anything?
No, and saying no to the quotation costs nothing either. Postage out to us is your only outlay. Whatever the journey back comes to, it goes on our invoice and not yours.
Is any money wanted before you start?
Half at the start applies to three kinds of job: a repair needing donor components found and matched, a recorder with its disk built into the chassis, and any forensic instruction. The reason is identical in each — the hours and the parts go whether or not the data returns. Handing the data over is when the other half falls due. Everything else here works the opposite way about, with no fee on most jobs where nothing is recovered.
When is the invoice settled?
Between two events. First you read the list of what came off and confirm it is right; only then does the fresh media go in the post. That order is written into the terms. An ordinary job asks you for nothing when the drive lands and nothing while the bench work is going on.
Will anything be added to the bill?
None at all. Nobody is billed for the diagnosis, return postage sits on our side of the ledger, and the figure you agreed is the figure you are invoiced. There is one extra, priority handling, and only where you ask for it; what it adds is quoted to you first.
Somebody else has quoted less. What now?
Three questions will settle it. Does that price survive the drive being opened? If the recovery comes to nothing, what is owed? And whose bench does the work? Our answers, in that order: it survives; on most jobs you owe nothing; and nobody else ever handles the drive.
That is the whole list. Yours goes in writing after a free look.
Send the form, or simply post the drive — both routes work. Nothing is charged for the diagnosis, the price reaches you in writing, and the decision after that is yours.