Every band, in prose
What RAID drive recovery costs. In sentences, because a table would imply more certainty than a sealed drive allows.
The first look is free. After it, you get one figure in writing, and nothing chargeable begins until you agree. One failed member drive, imaged onto fresh media so the set can be rebuilt, is £300 + VAT whether it is a 15K SAS drive, an NL-SAS drive from a shelf, a SCSI drive from 2006, an SSD or an NVMe member, and whether it needs a head swap in clean air, a service-area repair, a 520-byte translation or an unlock with your key. A set of two to four members that has failed as a set is £500 + VAT upwards, rising with the number of drives and with what was done to the set before it arrived. Larger sets, 15K SAS sets of five or more, and storage shelves start at £1,250 + VAT. On most jobs, if no data comes back, there is no bill. Recovered data goes home on fresh media, and return postage is paid here. One drive normally takes 3–4 days at the bench after the free look; a set 5–10 days at the bench.
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The opening figure, by job.
One drive is one price. A single member from any server, shelf or RAID box, failed, dropped, predictive, clicking, locked or reporting 0 GB, is £300 + VAT after a free look, with the figure in writing before any chargeable work, whether the fault turns out to be a head stack on the clean bench, a service area that would not load, a controller in an SSD, a 520-byte format to translate or a SED to unlock with your key. The image comes back on fresh media, sector-identical, ready to rebuild from.
Two or more drives that made up one set, where the set itself has failed, are a set, and a set of two to four starts at £500 + VAT. That covers a RAID 1 pair, a RAID 5 or 10 of four, a two-bay Thunderbolt box, a mirrored boot pair, and the arrays reassembled from the images on the array bench. Sets of five or more, 15K SAS sets whose donors take finding, and storage shelves of twelve or twenty-four drives, including the 520-byte aggregates from NetApp and EMC, start at £1,250 + VAT. Priority handling, where the drives go to the front of the bench, is quoted separately and only when you ask for it. VAT is added to every figure at the standard rate.
What moves a figure within its band.
The number of drives, first: a set is priced for its members, because every one of them is imaged and every image is part of the reconstruction. Then what was done before the parcel: a rebuild that ran into a second failure, a foreign configuration cleared, drives initialised or their sector size reformatted, a forced online, a firmware update pushed onto failed SSDs, a PSID revert. Each is honestly described as more work, or as the end of the road, and each is quoted before you agree.
What does not move the figure: the interface, the maker, the capacity, the format, or a drive inside the set that needs a head swap. A 15K SAS drive costs the same as a SATA one; a 520-byte drive the same as a 512; a SED with its key the same as an unencrypted drive; a helium drive opened once the same as an air drive. A drive another laboratory has already worked on, or drives that have been opened at home, sit outside the no data, no bill promise, and you are told that at the outset.
What the free look covers.
Logging, a number on every drive matched to its slot, photographs, and a read-only assessment on the imager the drive's interface needs, never in a server: the firmware, the sector format, the security state, the defect lists and the controller's own metadata, read before a sector is. We identify the drive, the fault, and how much can honestly be read back. You then get an account of what we found, what we expect to recover, and one price. If you say no, the drives come back to you at our expense, and nothing is owed.
What the vendor's replacement, and the £49 download, are really offering.
The vendor's replacement under warranty works when every surviving drive is healthy and you have a backup: the engineer fits the new drive, the controller rebuilds onto it from clean survivors, and the failed drive leaves with the courier. On a set whose survivors were bought the same day as the drive that failed, the rebuild reads every sector of a drive that is about to do the same thing, and the failed drive that left with the courier was the only place the stripes it stopped on still existed. The bench does the same rebuild on images, which cannot stall, and keeps the failed drive until the set is whole.
Recovery software has a narrower place than its advertising suggests: a healthy set, every drive readable on the host you have, the metadata intact, and the software run against images rather than the drives. It cannot see a SAS drive without an HBA, cannot read a 520-byte drive at all, cannot unlock a SED, cannot image a weak drive, and against a set with a failing member every scan is thousands of extra reads of the weakest surface. The free look is where you find out which yours is, and it costs nothing.
The questions that come up first.
Is the first look really free?
Yes. Diagnosis carries no charge on any job, and if you decline the figure the drives come back to you with nothing owed and the postage paid here.
What if nothing can be recovered?
On most jobs, no data means no bill. The two exceptions — a drive another laboratory has worked on, and drives opened at home — are named before you agree to anything.
Does the interface or the maker change the price?
No. The number of drives does: £300 + VAT for one, £500 + VAT upwards for a set of two to four, from £1,250 + VAT for larger sets, 15K SAS sets and storage shelves.
Is there a deposit?
No. Nothing is charged until you have seen the file list and accepted the figure.
How do I pay?
By bank transfer or card, once you have approved the file list. The recovered data and the original drives go back together, with the postage paid here.
That is the entire list.
Yours arrives in writing after a free look, and the decision is yours with one figure in front of you.