Recovery pricing has a bad reputation, mostly earned by two habits: teaser rates that triple on contact with reality, and evaluation fees that hold your drive hostage while the real number is composed. This page takes the opposite route — here is our entire price list, and here is exactly why each line costs what it costs.
Memory cards and USB sticks share an anatomy — a controller in front of NAND flash — and a failure pattern: the controller or connector dies while the flash keeps your files. The fee covers the whole ladder that follows: logical recovery when the media still mounts, micro-soldering for snapped connectors, and direct chip reads with the controller’s scrambling solved in software when nothing else answers.
One card, one stick, one fixed number — whether it’s a £6 freebie or a 512 GB workhorse, because the work is the work.
This is the line most people need and the one most markets complicate. Clicking heads needing donors under the laminar-flow hood; dead boards needing ROM transplants; firmware rebuilt on the PC-3000; SSDs coaxed through engineering modes or read chip-by-chip; Macs with removable drives, imaged whichever way the fault allows. Different faults, wildly different bench-hours — one price.
Why flatten it? Because you can’t diagnose your own drive, so fault-based pricing just means the price is whatever we say after you’re committed. A flat band puts the risk on us, where it belongs.
RAID, NAS and server work starts at £500 and is quoted to the job for an honest reason: every member disk is imaged individually before the array logic is even attempted, and eight disks is simply more careful hours than four. The written quote lands at diagnosis — disk count, condition and complexity on the table — and holds.
What never appears on this line: per-gigabyte pricing, “criticality” surcharges, or a premium because the data sounds valuable. The array doesn’t know what it holds; neither should the invoice.
Some jobs sit above the standard bands because the work is genuinely different, and the honest thing is to say so before you post anything. BitLocker recovery and CCTV / DVR / NVR systems are a fixed £800 + VAT — encrypted volumes and proprietary surveillance filesystems are long-form bench work, not drive jobs with a twist. Virtual machine recovery and forensic work with chain-of-custody reporting start from £800 + VAT. Fusion Drive Macs — two devices, one volume — are a flat £550 + VAT. And SAN & enterprise storage starts from £1,250 + VAT, quoted shelf by shelf. Every figure is a starting point fixed in writing after the free diagnostic — never a surprise after it.
What comes back from each type of device, and the number it starts at. All prices exclude VAT and are fixed in writing after the free diagnostic.
| Device | From | |
|---|---|---|
| Hard Drive | £300 | details → |
| SSD & NVMe | £300 | details → |
| External HDD | £300 | details → |
| USB Stick | £250 | details → |
| Memory Card | £250 | details → |
| Laptop & PC | £300 | details → |
| Mac & MacBook | £300 | details → |
| RAID Array | from £500 | details → |
| NAS | from £500 | details → |
| Server | from £500 | details → |
| Database | from £500 | details → |
| BitLocker | £800 | details → |
| CCTV / DVR / NVR | £800 | details → |
| Virtual Machine | from £800 | details → |
| Forensic | from £800 | details → |
| SAN | from £1,250 | details → |
A fixed £300 + VAT — internal or external, laptop or desktop, clicking or simply invisible. Free diagnostic first, the figure confirmed in writing, and on most jobs nothing to pay unless the recovery succeeds. Post it in from anywhere in the UK or bring it to Tay House on Bath Street.
The same £300 + VAT band. That includes the bridge-board and firmware faults common on WD, Seagate, Buffalo and LaCie externals — where the case has died rather than the disk, which is more often than people fear.
£300 + VAT flat for any Mac or MacBook with a removable drive; Fusion Drive machines — two devices, one volume — are a flat £550 + VAT. Machines with storage soldered to the board aren’t work we take on, and the free diagnostic says so straight away.
£300 + VAT for SATA, M.2 and NVMe SSDs, dead controllers included. Monolith and chip-off jobs sit in the exceptions band and are always priced first.
From £500 + VAT, quoted to the job — every member disk of a RAID array or NAS is imaged individually before the volume is rebuilt virtually, so the figure follows the disk count and their condition.
£250 + VAT for USB sticks and SD, microSD and CF cards — snapped connectors and format-me errors alike. Chip-level monolith work is the exception, quoted in writing first.
BitLocker and CCTV / DVR / NVR recovery are a fixed £800 + VAT; virtual machines and forensic work start from £800 + VAT; SAN and enterprise storage from £1,250 + VAT. All fixed in writing after the free diagnostic.
Databases repaired at page level, virtual machines rebuilt layer by layer, forensic instructions with reporting and custody, wallet-search engagements, destruction batches with certificates — these vary too much in scope for honest flat rates, so each is scoped and quoted in writing after the free assessment. Variable scope, fixed behaviour: the figure always arrives before the work does.
Each price includes the free diagnostic, the careful imaging, the recovery itself, verification of what came back, return of your original device, and your data on new encrypted media. Priority handling for genuine emergencies is the one paid extra — quoted alongside the standard figure so the premium is a choice, never a surprise.
Because “from” is doing heroic work in that sentence. The £49 tier is software over a healthy drive; the moment yours shows real damage, the price discovers itself — frequently in the several-hundreds, sometimes four figures, announced while they hold your device. Fixed bands exist so the number you plan on is the number you pay.
Because price follows engineering effort, not grams. A failing card often means reading the NAND directly — monoliths through microscopic test points — and rebuilding files from the raw dump. That’s bench-hours and specialist tooling regardless of capacity. The honest surprise runs the other way: complex work at a fixed £250 at all.
No — the quote is written and fixed before paid work begins; “to the job” describes how it’s calculated, not when you learn it. Disk count, imaging condition and rebuild complexity set the figure at diagnosis. If the scope changes materially once imaging reveals the true state, you hear about it before it costs you anything.
The incentive runs opposite: we only get paid by succeeding, so hopeless-looking drives get the full method — donor parts, service-area work, patient imaging — because that’s what makes them stop being hopeless. What no-fix-no-fee really removes is our ability to charge you for a shrug.
£300 + VAT, fixed — internal or external, whatever the fault turns out to be. Free diagnostic first, and on most jobs nothing to pay unless the recovery succeeds. The figure is the same whether you walk it into Tay House or post it from Penzance.
£300 + VAT flat for MacBooks with removable drives; Fusion Drive machines are a flat £550 + VAT. Machines with soldered storage aren’t work we take on — the free diagnostic tells you which you have.
Yes — free, not free-then-invoiced. We assess the device, tell you what failed and what’s realistically recoverable, and put the fixed figure in writing. Decide not to proceed and you owe nothing beyond any return postage.
Because you’re buying what software can’t do: donor parts matched to your exact drive, hardware imaging built to read failing media gently, firmware access no consumer tool has — and a no-fix-no-fee promise the utility doesn’t make. On a healthy drive the utility is fine; on a failing one it’s often the most expensive thing you can run.
Send or bring the device and the written figure follows the free diagnostic — usually within a working day of arrival. Data recovery cost in Glasgow, explained before it’s charged: that’s the whole policy.