The lab · every band printed
Prices you can read before you ring. Yours goes on paper first.
The scale opens at £250 + VAT, and every band above it sits on this page, so you can place your device before you ever pick up the phone. Pinning down the exact figure is free, whichever corner of Cardiff the parcel leaves from, and on most work a recovery that fails produces no invoice.
Describe the symptoms to an engineer
0800 6890668
What each kind of job opens at.
| Starts from | The job | What that band covers |
|---|---|---|
| £250 + VAT | Memory cards and pen drives | All flash: SD and microSD, CompactFlash, thumb drives |
| £300 + VAT | A single drive | Hard disk, SSD or NVMe, loose or still in the machine |
| £300 + VAT | Mac desktops and laptops | APFS and HFS+, FileVault, T2, Apple Silicon |
| £400 + VAT | CCTV, DVR and NVR | Recorder boxes on their own — Hikvision, Dahua, Swann and the rest |
| from £500 + VAT | NAS units, RAID sets and servers | RAID 0/1/5/6/10; Synology, QNAP, Dell PowerEdge, HP, WD, Lenovo |
| from £500 + VAT | Databases and mail stores | Exchange, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL |
| £800 + VAT and up | Virtual machine images | VMDK, VHDX, VHD and QCOW2 — lost snapshots, damaged VM folders |
| £800 + VAT and up | Forensics and expert reports | Workplace disputes written up for court, chain of custody intact |
| from £1,250 + VAT | Large arrays and SAN | A volume spread across more than one array |
Cannot see your device on the list? The symptom checker answers three things at once: your band, the likely fault, and what to do before you post it.
Four things those figures assume.
- Every figure here is before VAT, added on at the standard UK rate.
- These are opening figures, not final bills. What you actually pay comes out of the fault we find, and it is written down after the free diagnosis, before a penny is charged.
- On most work it is no recovery, no fee. If the files you were after never turn up, nothing is charged for the attempt.
- Half up front on three kinds of job: forensic instructions, recorders, and repairs that need donor parts fitted inside the drive. Each eats the same bench hours whether it succeeds or not. The other half falls due once your data is back in your hands.
Same band, two different bills — here is why.
Where things go once you have the figure.
| The situation | What has gone wrong | What you pay |
|---|---|---|
| You say yes | We start at the figure you approved | Payable once you have seen the files |
| You say no | It goes back to you with our findings | Nothing for the look, nothing for the postage |
| The recovery fails | No recovery, no fee covers most work | You pay nothing at all |
| A surprise turns up mid-job | We stop and ring you before carrying on | The agreed figure stands |
| Donor parts, recorders, forensic work | 50% to begin, 50% on success | Told to you before you commit |
| Another firm has been inside it | Quoted case by case after the look | No-fee cover might not apply |
The £49 headline, and what it leaves out
- £49 buys a door, not a recovery — its job is to get your drive onto somebody's bench. The real total lands afterwards, when the case is open and walking away feels harder.
- Ask what failure costs — with no no-recovery-no-fee promise behind it, nobody there has much reason to ring you quickly with bad news.
- Ask whether the figure can rise — ours does not. Whatever we run into after you have agreed is our problem, not your bill. You are invoiced the number you approved.
- Ask whose bench it lands on — plenty of firms are middlemen who take a margin and pass the drive along. Yours stays with our own engineers the whole way through.
What a table cannot tell you: read these numbers as exact. One hard disk with a purely logical fault is £300 + VAT — not roughly £300, not £300 and a little more. No list can say in advance whether a mechanical failure wants a single donor part or three. That is what the diagnosis settles, and why your figure goes in writing before work starts.
What people want to know before posting.
What will data recovery cost me?
Where the price opens depends on what you send. Cards and USB sticks come in at £250 + VAT. A drive by itself — SSD, hard disk, laptop or Mac — costs £300 + VAT. Recorders, whether CCTV or DVR, are £400 + VAT. The moment two disks or more are involved, in a NAS, a RAID set or a server, you are looking at £500 + VAT to begin. Forensic instructions and virtual machine images open at £800 + VAT apiece. Every band is in the table above, and the figure for your device comes after the free diagnosis, in writing.
Is the diagnosis really free?
Yes, entirely. It stays free if you read the quote and walk away. The only money you spend is getting the device to the lab; the journey home is ours.
When do you ask for money up front?
Three kinds of work take the same bench hours and the same parts whether they succeed or fail: repairs using matched donor components, embedded recorders, and forensic instructions. For those, half the agreed price is paid before we start and the balance when the recovered files go back to you. Every other job runs on no recovery, no fee.
At what point do I pay?
Once you have been through the file list and approved it, and before the fresh media is posted out — the terms put it the same way. An ordinary job asks nothing of you at the beginning and nothing part-way through.
Are there charges I will not see coming?
None. The diagnosis is free, the return postage is ours, and you settle the figure you approved. Priority handling is the only extra that exists, and its cost is agreed with you before you take it.
What if I have been quoted less elsewhere?
Put three questions to them. Does that figure still hold once the drive has been opened? What is owed if nothing is recovered? And is the lab their own? Our answers, in order: yes it holds, nothing is owed, and the bench is ours.
The list ends here. Your own number starts with a free look.
A form, or a parcel — begin it whichever way suits you. The examination costs nothing, the price is written down, and the choice after that is yours.