The Two Prices That Matter
Every data recovery job starts with the same question: is this a logical problem or a physical one?
Logical means the drive works but the data is not where it should be. Deleted files. A formatted drive. A corrupt or unreadable volume. A laptop that will not boot but whose drive is perfectly healthy. The hardware is fine, so the job is skilled time on a bench machine.
Physical means the storage itself has failed. A hard drive that clicks, an SSD that is no longer detected, a drive that took a knock or a soaking. The job now involves opening or repairing the device before any data can be read, and that is where costs climb.
Roughly one in five jobs booked into our workshop between April and August 2026 involved data in some way, from a rescue off a dead drive to a transfer onto a new machine. Since 2009 we have handled more than 930 data recovery jobs, so the pricing below is based on what these jobs actually turn out to cost, not on a brochure.
Sound like your problem?
Bring it to our Putney workshop or message us a photo and we will give you a straight answer and a quote before any work starts.
What We Charge
These are our workshop prices. The full rate card is on the pricing page.
| Situation | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Assessment (agreed upfront, absorbed if you proceed) | £60–£120 |
| Logical recovery: deleted files, formatted drive, corrupt volume | from £75 |
| Drive extraction from a dead laptop or PC, files copied to a new drive | from £75 plus the destination drive |
| Physical recovery: failed hard drive or SSD | quoted individually after assessment |
| Cleanroom work: head swaps, platter transplants | referred to a specialist partner, quoted by them |
The assessment is the part people worry about, so to be clear: we tell you the figure before we touch the drive, and if you go ahead with the recovery it is absorbed into the price. It is not a fee on top.
The rule that matters more than any of the numbers is this: data recovery is charged only if the recovery succeeds. If we cannot get your files back, you do not pay for the recovery attempt.
What Pushes the Price Up
Five things move a job from the bottom of that table towards the top.
1. Whether the drive still spins or is still detected. This is the biggest single factor. A healthy drive with missing data is a bench job. A drive that is not detected, or a hard drive that clicks or grinds, is a physical job. If you hear clicking, switch it off now and read our guide on what to do when a hard drive fails.
2. Hard drive or SSD. Mechanical drives fail in ways that are well understood and often recoverable. SSDs fail electrically, and their controller and encryption have to be working before a single file can be read. That is why SSD recovery is harder than HDD recovery and, when it is a physical fault, costs more.
3. Encryption. BitLocker on Windows and FileVault on a Mac are excellent at their job, which is stopping anyone reading the drive without the key. That includes us. A recovery from an encrypted drive is only possible with the recovery key or password. Before you bring a drive in, look for the BitLocker key in your Microsoft account and make sure you know the Mac’s login password.
4. Soldered storage. On Apple silicon MacBooks and a growing number of thin Windows laptops, the storage is soldered to the logic board. There is no drive to pull out. If the board is dead, the board has to be brought back to life before the data can be read, so the job becomes a logic board repair first and a recovery second. Our MacBook liquid damage recovery case shows what that looks like in practice.
5. What has already been tried. Recovery software run on a failing drive, a drive that has been opened at home, or a drive that has been “chkdsk’d” for hours all make the eventual job harder. If in doubt, stop and ask before you try anything.
The Cheapest Recovery: A Dead Laptop With a Healthy Drive
The most common data recovery job we see is not really a recovery at all. The laptop will not power on, the owner assumes everything on it is gone, and in fact the drive is fine.
A typical example from this summer: a Dell XPS with corrupted firmware that Dell had written off as needing a new motherboard. The owner’s priority was the files, not the laptop. We removed the NVMe SSD, checked it on the bench, and copied everything to an external drive before any repair was attempted. Priced as a logical recovery, and the only extra cost was the destination drive.
If your laptop is dead, do not assume the data is. Read our workshop-data piece on why laptops actually stop turning on and then ask us about the drive.
When a Specialist Is the Right Answer
Some jobs need a cleanroom: a hard drive whose read heads have failed or whose platters are scored needs the heads swapped or the platters moved to a donor drive in a filtered environment. We do not do that in Putney, and we do not pretend to.
What we do is the assessment that tells you whether you need it. If the answer is yes, we say so before any further cost and refer you to a specialist partner, and you deal with their quote directly. Cleanroom recoveries commonly run to several hundred pounds and can go well beyond a thousand for severe mechanical damage, which is why the assessment step is worth having before you commit to anything.
Phones, Memory Cards and External Drives
The same logic applies to smaller devices. Deleted photos on a working SD card are a logical job. A phone that will not power on is a board question first. External drives are usually an ordinary laptop drive in a plastic case and are priced the same as an internal drive. We have a separate guide on recovering photos from a dead phone or SD card.
How to Keep the Bill Low
- Stop using the drive. Every write risks overwriting what you want back. On a failing hard drive, every spin is wear.
- Do not open it. A hard drive opened outside a cleanroom is usually a hard drive that now needs one.
- Bring the whole machine, the charger and any passwords. We may need to read the drive in place, and we cannot read an encrypted one without the key.
- Tell us what matters. Recovering one folder of family photos is a smaller job than recovering a full disk image.
- Decide about a backup afterwards. A recovery you have paid for once is a strong argument for a backup that means you never pay for one again.
What to Expect From Us
Bring the device to our Putney workshop or message us a description of what happened. We assess it, agree the figure with you, and only proceed on your say-so. Logical recoveries and drive extractions are usually ready within two to three working days. If the job is physical we tell you what it involves and what it will cost before we start, and if it needs a cleanroom we tell you that too. And if we cannot get the data back, you do not pay for the attempt.
