Same imaging, same reconstruction, same verification. A firm pricing by volume recovered is pricing by what you stand to lose rather than by what it has to do — and understanding what genuinely sets the cost explains why UK quotes vary by a factor of ten.
Whether you need back four gigabytes or four terabytes barely moves the figure. What moves it is whether the drive has to be opened, whether donor parts are involved, and how many devices must be reassembled together.
UK data recovery pricing varies enormously and much of the variation is not about the work. A single drive should sit somewhere between £250 and £600 depending on fault class, and array work between £500 and £1,500. Figures far outside those ranges deserve questions in both directions.
Our own published prices are £250 +VAT for cards and USB media, £300 +VAT for a single drive and £500 +VAT for arrays, fixed in writing after a free diagnostic. We publish them so they can be held against anyone else's.
What matters more than the number is how the number behaves after you have committed.
Is the diagnostic free, and can the quote go up? A figure that can rise once the drive is open was an estimate, not a quote. Ask what happens if the job turns out harder than expected.
Do you charge a percentage of anything? Percentage arrangements give a recovery firm a direct interest in what your data is worth and in you believing recovery is possible. Fixed fees do not.
What can you not recover? The most revealing question on the list. A laboratory without a ready answer has either not done enough of this or would rather not say.
Who actually does the work? A good deal of UK recovery is subcontracted onward, meaning more hands, more transit and more people with access to your data.
Partly fault class, which is legitimate, and partly business model. Percentage pricing and open-ended estimates both produce figures that bear little relation to the work.
It should be, on most jobs. Where clean-air work or donor parts are involved those costs commit at the start, so a deposit is reasonable — but you should be told that before agreeing.
On a healthy drive, possibly, and it may save you the fee. On a drive making any noise, no. Ring and ask — we will tell you for nothing.
Not necessarily, and not automatically the wrong one either. Ask the four questions above and judge on the answers rather than the figure.