A free written diagnosis, a fixed quote before any work starts, and no fix, no fee on most jobs. Below, you'll see what recovery costs for each device, how the pricing works, and the questions that come up most often.
Your exact price is put in writing after the free diagnostic — never before it.
No phone estimates, and no work without your say-so. Every recovery runs through the same four steps.
Drop off or post your device and we diagnose it free, usually inside 48 hours — what's failed, what can be recovered, and what it'll cost.
You'll have a clear, fixed price in writing before anything billable begins — and nothing goes ahead until you've approved it.
On most jobs, no recovered data means no recovery fee — so there's nothing to lose by letting us take a look.
Because physical drive-level repairs call for matched donor parts and bench time, those carry a 50% payment up front, with the rest due only on success.
Starting prices by type of job, before VAT. Your exact price is confirmed in writing once the free diagnostic is done.
What we recover from each type of device, and where its pricing begins. Tap through for the full detail and device-specific FAQs.
| Device | From | |
|---|---|---|
| Hard Drive | £300 | details → |
| SSD & NVMe | £300 | details → |
| USB Stick | £250 | details → |
| Memory Card | £250 | details → |
| External HDD | £300 | details → |
| Mac & MacBook | £300 | details → |
| Laptop & PC | £300 | details → |
| RAID Array | from £500 | details → |
| NAS | from £500 | details → |
| Server | from £500 | details → |
| Virtual Machine | from £800 | details → |
| Database | from £500 | details → |
| SAN | from £1,250 | details → |
| CCTV / DVR / NVR | £800 | details → |
The questions we're asked most. For anything device-specific, see that device's page in the table above.
Every job starts with a free written diagnosis, normally within 48 hours. A fixed written quote follows — and nothing billable happens until you've approved it. As a rough guide: memory cards and USB sticks £250 + VAT; single drives such as hard drives, SSDs, laptops and Macs at £300 + VAT; multi-disk RAID and NAS from £500 + VAT; and SAN or enterprise storage starting at £1,250 + VAT.
No — each price is quoted before VAT, which is charged at the UK's standard rate. Your written quote always shows the VAT-inclusive total before you commit to anything.
For most jobs, yes — no recovered data, no recovery fee. The exceptions are physical drive- and card-level repairs, DVR and forensic work.
Physical-level work — head swaps, motor or platter jobs, circuit-board rebuilds — demands matched donor parts and a lot of painstaking bench time, win or lose. DVR and forensic work are the same, eating up serious specialist time whatever the result. On those jobs there's a 50% payment up front toward parts and labour, with the balance owed only if we recover your data.
The free diagnosis usually comes back within 48 hours. Simple logical recoveries often wrap up in a few days; physical repairs and RAID or NAS rebuilds run longer, according to parts and complexity. Your quote comes with a realistic timeframe, and there's a priority option if you're racing a deadline.
Bring it in to our Belfast office — Forsyth House, Cromac Square, BT2 8LA, Monday to Friday 9am-5:30pm — or send it to us by fully insured post. There's no collection service, so those are your two routes.
Just the drives. Remove them from the enclosure and mark each with its bay position (drive 1, drive 2, and so on) — that ordering is what the rebuild relies on. No need to send the NAS enclosure itself, or the RAID controller.
No. We work on drives, RAID and NAS, servers, SAN, virtual machines and databases — mobile phones and tablets aren't something we handle.
All the major names — Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung and Toshiba drives; QNAP, Synology, Netgear and WD NAS; Dell, HP, IBM and Lenovo servers; and, on the business side, VMware, Hyper-V, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Exchange.
No — when a drive is physically failing (clicking, not spinning, dropping off), recovery software keeps it running and almost always deepens the damage. Power it down and send it to us untouched.
Yes, so long as you can give us the password or recovery key. We recover the encrypted volume and unlock it with your key; without the key, forensic decryption is an option, though it's never guaranteed to work.
Every recovery is done in-house by our own engineers. Your drives stay in our hands throughout, and your data remains confidential from the moment it arrives until it ships back to you.
Start with a free written diagnosis. We'll confirm precisely what can be recovered and what it'll cost — and then it's your call. Drop your device in to us in Belfast, or send it by fully insured post.