Data Recovery Case File · Trust, Practice & Honest Limits · The Honest Answer to a Fair Question

Why Nobody Can Price It Without Seeing It

His enquiry asked the question customers most want answered and phrased it with unusual fairness. A 2TB drive from a network storage appliance: "It's dead. What is the likely cost of recovering — or would you need to look at it?" He has anticipated the answer and asked anyway, which is entirely reasonable. The answer is yes, and it deserves an explanation rather than a reflex, because "it's dead" is not one situation. Those three words cover an outcome that costs nothing and an outcome at the most expensive end of this trade, with several stops in between — and no honest figure can span that range.

The decode: what "dead" spans, and what an assessment settles

The range hiding behind the word. A dead network appliance may mean a failed power adapter — the commonest single fault on these units, costing nothing to establish and nothing to recover from, because the drive inside is untouched. It may mean the appliance's own board has failed, in which case the drive is again fine and the job is to read it directly. It may mean the drive's circuit board has failed, which is component-level repair. It may mean the drive will not spin, which is mechanical work at the dearer end. Or it may mean head damage, which is the most involved work there is. Every one of those presents to an owner as a box that does nothing.

Why a quoted figure without seeing it is worse than no figure: a firm asked to price that range has two dishonest options. It can quote the top of the range to be safe, which means most customers are told a mechanical price for what turns out to be a power supply. Or it can quote a low figure to secure the job and revise it upward once the device arrives — which is how people end up with an invoice that bears no relation to what they agreed. Neither is a quotation; both are guesses dressed up as one.

What an assessment actually produces: the fault characterised rather than described, a realistic statement of what can be recovered, and one fixed figure including VAT issued in writing before anything chargeable begins — a figure that does not move afterwards and carries no hourly meter. It costs nothing and commits him to nothing, which is precisely what makes it the honest first step rather than a sales device.

The specific hope for his device: worth stating, because it is the likeliest good outcome. On consumer network appliances the external power supply fails far more often than anything inside, and the drive within is an ordinary disk carrying a Linux filesystem. So "the unit is dead" very frequently means "the unit needs a power supply and the drive is perfectly fine". Establishing that is the first thing done and it is free.

The one caution about testing it himself: a substitute power supply must match voltage, polarity and current rating exactly. The wrong adapter is one of the few home tests that can turn a working drive into a damaged one, so it is worth checking the ratings rather than trying whatever fits.

On the bench

The cheapest possibilities were eliminated first, because a device that fails for want of a power supply should not be quoted as a recovery. The power supply and the appliance's own electronics were tested before the drive was implicated at all, and only where those proved sound was the drive itself assessed. Where the drive was sound it was read write-blocked on native equipment, taking the dead appliance out of the question. The fault was characterised and one fixed figure issued in writing before any chargeable work began.

The outcome

The power supply and appliance eliminated first at no cost, the fault characterised and a fixed figure issued before commitment. Free assessment, one fixed written figure including VAT; where a drive has to be opened, 50% of parts and labour is payable upfront with the balance only on success — otherwise no recovery, no fee. The answer to his question: yes, and for a reason rather than as a formality — "it's dead" spans a failed power adapter, a failed appliance board, a failed drive board, a seized motor and head damage, which run from nothing to the dearest work in the trade; a firm quoting across that range is either padding to the worst case or offering a figure that will grow; the assessment is free and produces one fixed written figure that does not move; and on appliances like his, the external power supply fails more often than anything inside it.

Our case files are drawn from genuine enquiries received by our laboratory over the past ten years, anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Each one describes the diagnostic and recovery procedure our engineers apply to that fault, using the equipment listed.