Published figures, for Liverpool, for Merseyside and for anywhere else in the country with a post office in it. Six bands take in nearly everything that reaches this bench, and the one against your job goes in writing the moment an engineer has looked at the hardware. VAT is extra and shown separately.
Nobody is charged for finding out. Not by the wizard here, and not by the engineer in Manchester. The only invoice that lands is one you read and agreed to first.
Two things move a price here and neither of them is you. The first is what sort of media it is; the second is what has physically gone wrong inside it. How urgent the job sounds on the telephone has never once shifted a figure, and neither has what the files are worth to whoever owns them. Almost everything Merseyside puts in the post lands in one of the six bands below. Add VAT to each.
Anything flash and pocket-sized: SD, microSD, CompactFlash, and the USB stick that lives on a keyring. Where the controller has stopped talking, the chips themselves are read instead.
One disk. It makes no difference whether it span or not, nor which machine it came out of, so a tower disk, a MacBook blade and a drive lifted from an external case all sit here together.
Anything holding several disks: arrays, NAS units, servers. Each member is copied in its own right before a single stripe is put back, which is why the count of disks moves the figure.
The disk out of a CCTV or DVR recorder, with whichever hours of footage you actually need exported and documented for whoever is going to read them.
Unlocking BitLocker on a drive that is otherwise in good order, where you are able to produce the recovery key or it can be recovered forensically.
Investigation work ending in a written report. Drop the report and the forensic binary image with deleted-file extraction is £400 + VAT.
Boiled down: a single hard drive or SSD costs £300 + VAT, with NVMe blades counted alongside. Multi-disk work, whether that is RAID, a NAS box or a server, opens at £500 + VAT and rises with the member count. Recorder disks and BitLocker unlocks take £400 + VAT apiece, and forensic casework with a report is £800 + VAT. Your own number starts with a free diagnostic.
Ask them in this order and the band falls out at the end:
Nowhere in those three is a question about how much you want the data back, and that is deliberate. A trade with a reputation for reading the customer before setting the price is a trade worth publishing figures in, which is why these ones are on a public page rather than behind a form.
Nothing on this site takes a payment, and nothing at the bench is billed for working out what has gone wrong. The free diagnostic is where every job starts, in both of its senses: the wizard here, and the engineer's examination in Manchester once your media has arrived. Out of the second comes a single fixed quote in writing. Say yes and work begins. Say no and the media is posted back to you. Neither answer costs anything.
No fix, no fee covers logical work — deleted or formatted files, a corrupted file system, or a healthy drive that simply refuses to appear. If that data cannot be brought home, the invoice reads zero.
The footing changes when the bench finds damage to the electronics, the mechanics or the media itself, along with anything scorched or soaked. Half the quoted figure is settled before the drive is opened. That is not a hedge; it is because donor boards, head and motor transplants, chips lifted off cards and firmware-level surgery all spend real money and real bench hours before a single sector has been read. The balance is due only when your data is genuinely in your hands.
Investigation work is settled in full before it begins, and that covers recorder footage, BitLocker unlocking and ransomware cases as well as ordinary forensic instructions. The standard investigation runs to £800 + VAT with its complete written report. Where no report is wanted, the forensic binary image with deleted-file extraction is £400 + VAT.
Everything above assumes the media has reached the bench. That address is Manchester Data Recovery, Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5AN: roughly 35 miles of M62 from Liverpool, or one working day in the post from any Merseyside address. Assessment closes 2 working days after it lands. Knowing exactly where you stand, in other words, is the part that costs nothing.
A recovery quote here is not a labour rate with extras bolted on afterwards, so it is worth setting out exactly what the number covers.
Outside it there are two things and both are small. Carriage in is yours to buy, because the tracked, insured service is yours to choose. And VAT is added rather than absorbed, so it appears on the quote as a figure of its own and you can see precisely what the recovery itself came to.
What does not exist here is the list of extras this trade is known for. No charge for looking. No premium for a job somebody described as urgent. No per-gigabyte arithmetic. No separate fee for the report on an ordinary recovery. And no figure that moves between the quote and the invoice, which is the whole point of putting it in writing first.
A normal week on this bench, with the band each of these landed in and the footing that came with it. Yours will differ in the detail and not in the method: a figure, fixed, in writing, before a screwdriver moves.
The drive itself was in perfect order. A folder had simply been moved somewhere nobody could find it and then written over in part. Logical throughout, so £300 + VAT with the no fix, no fee footing intact: had it come back empty, the invoice would have read zero.
Heads resting on the platters. That means a donor unit, a clean bench and the hours both take, so the footing changes even though the band does not. Still £300 + VAT, half of it settled before the lid comes off and the rest when the files go home.
Four disks, each imaged separately, then rejoined in software with nothing written back to the originals. From £500 + VAT, the total following the member count, and because the reassembly never left logical territory the no fix, no fee footing held throughout.
Recorder work stands on the forensic footing whatever the reason for it, so the £400 + VAT is settled before it starts. The clips that mattered were exported with their timestamps and documented well enough for an insurer to accept them.
Diagnosis comes first and free, the written price second, and not a thing happens until you say go.
Nearly everything on this bench arrived by tracked, insured post. It is the calmest way to move a failing drive, and a parcel handed in anywhere on Merseyside is normally on the bench the next working day.
Still screwed inside a laptop, tower, MacBook, iMac, server or a CCTV recorder? Take the drive out and post that on its own. We do not strip machines here, and any computer shop will do it in a few minutes. The one job nobody can take on is flash soldered straight to a logic board, as on Apple Silicon Macs and a handful of very slim laptops: if the storage will not unbolt, there is nothing to send.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Address it to Manchester Data Recovery. It is roughly 35 miles from Liverpool along the M62 if you fancy the run, and next working day by tracked post if you do not. We ring or email the moment it is booked in, and the free diagnostic closes 2 working days after that.
Not sure what belongs in the parcel? Call 0800 689 0668 before you tape it shut, or step through the free online diagnostic first.