The price list · nothing held back
Every band on the page, for Hull. Yours is fixed in writing before the disk is opened.
£250 + VAT is the bottom of the list, and every band above it is printed below, so you can find your device before you ring. Settling on the exact number costs nothing, wherever in Hull the parcel starts from, and on most work a failed recovery means no invoice at all.
An engineer will take the details
0800 6890668
Which price band each job starts in.
| Opens at | The work | What sits in that band |
|---|---|---|
| £250 + VAT | Cards and USB sticks | Flash of any kind: SD, microSD, CompactFlash, pen drives |
| £300 + VAT | One drive | Hard disk, SSD or NVMe, bare or still inside the machine |
| £300 + VAT | iMacs and MacBooks | FileVault, APFS and HFS+, T2 and Apple silicon |
| £400 + VAT | DVR, NVR and CCTV boxes | The recorder by itself — Hikvision, Dahua, Swann and others |
| from £500 + VAT | Servers, RAID sets and NAS boxes | RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10; Synology, QNAP, WD, Dell PowerEdge, HP, Lenovo |
| from £500 + VAT | Mail stores and databases | Exchange, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server |
| £800 + VAT and up | Virtual machine disks | VMDK, VHDX, VHD and QCOW2 — missing snapshots, broken VM folders |
| £800 + VAT and up | Forensic work and reports | Employment and civil matters written up, with the handling logged |
| from £1,250 + VAT | SAN and large arrays | One volume running across several arrays |
Device not on the list? The symptom checker settles three things in one go: which band you are in, the likely fault, and what not to do before posting it.
Four things to read with the table.
- All of these are before VAT, charged on top at the standard UK rate.
- These are starting points, not invoices. The figure you pay follows from the fault we find, and it goes in writing after the free diagnosis, before anything is charged.
- Most jobs run on no recovery, no fee. Where the files you were chasing never appear, the attempt is not charged for.
- Three kinds of job take 50% up front: forensic instructions, recorders, and repairs where donor parts go inside the drive. Those cost us the same bench time whether they work or not. The rest falls due once the files are back with you.
Two jobs in one band, two different bills.
What happens after the quote arrives.
| What happens | What the fault is | The bill |
|---|---|---|
| You approve it | Work begins at the agreed number | Due after you have seen the file list |
| You turn it down | The device comes home with the findings | No charge for either the look or the return post |
| Nothing is recoverable | Most work carries no recovery, no fee | Nothing to pay |
| Something unexpected appears | We stop and phone before going further | The number you agreed holds |
| Donor parts, recorders, forensics | Half at the start, half on success | Said up front, before you agree |
| Someone else has opened it already | Priced individually after the diagnosis | The no-fee terms may not hold |
The £49 advert, and what it does not say
- £49 is an entry fee, not a recovery — what it buys is a drive sitting on somebody else's bench. The real number arrives later, once the job is open and walking out is harder.
- Ask what happens if it fails — where there is no promise of a free failure, nobody is in a hurry to bring you bad news.
- Ask if the price can move — ours cannot. Anything we meet after you have agreed is our problem. The invoice matches the quote you approved.
- Ask where the work actually happens — plenty of firms add a margin and post the drive somewhere else. Yours stays with our own engineers from start to finish.
What a table cannot settle: take these numbers literally. A single hard disk with nothing but a logical fault is £300 + VAT — not about £300, not £300 plus extras. What no list can predict is whether a mechanical failure needs one donor part or three. The diagnosis answers that, which is why your figure is written down before any work begins.
What people ask before sending it in.
How much will a recovery come to?
Two things set it: what the device is, and how many disks are inside. Flash media — a card, a pen drive — opens at £250 + VAT. A single drive by itself, hard disk or SSD, in a laptop or a Mac, comes to £300 + VAT. For a recorder it is £400 + VAT. Once two disks or more are in play, inside a NAS, a server or a RAID set, the opening figure becomes £500 + VAT. Virtual machine images start at £800 + VAT, and so do forensic instructions. The full table is above; your own figure is written down after the diagnosis.
Is the look genuinely free?
Completely. Read the quote, say no, and there is still nothing to pay. Your only outlay is postage to the lab — the trip home is on us.
When is a deposit asked for?
Three sorts of work cost us the same bench time and the same parts whether or not they come off: repairs using matched donor components, recorders with the disk built in, and forensic instructions. On those, half the agreed price comes before we start and half when the files go back. Everything else runs on no recovery, no fee.
When does the money change hands?
After you have gone through the file list and said it is right, and before the new media is posted — the terms say the same. An ordinary job asks for nothing at the start and nothing halfway.
Anything hidden in the bill?
No. The diagnosis costs nothing, we pay the return post, and you settle the figure you agreed to. Priority handling is the one extra there is, and its price is agreed before you take it.
Someone else has quoted lower. Then what?
Ask them three questions. Once the drive is open, does that price still stand? If nothing at all is recovered, what is owed? And whose lab does the work? For us: it stands, you owe nothing, and the job never leaves our own engineers.
The bands end here. Your own figure needs a free look first.
Fill in the form or put it in the post, whichever suits. Nothing is charged for the look, the figure goes on paper, and the next move belongs to you.