Straight answers on price for Swansea and South Wales: most recoveries sit in a handful of fixed bands, and your own figure arrives in writing after a free diagnostic — before any work is approved. Every figure shown is plus VAT.
Diagnostics cost nothing — online or at our Bristol location. The only figure you ever pay is a written quote you approved, and logical work is strictly no fix, no fee.
The device and the fault set the price — urgency doesn't. Almost every job we take on for Swansea and South Wales customers lands in one of the bands below, and your own figure is fixed in writing once the free diagnostic is complete. Every band is plus VAT.
Memory cards and USB sticks — SD, microSD, CompactFlash and pen drives, with your files rebuilt from the flash chips themselves.
One hard drive or SSD, whether from a laptop, desktop, Mac or external caddy — NVMe blades come in at the same figure.
RAID arrays, NAS units and servers — priced by the number of disks, because each member is imaged separately before the rebuild.
CCTV and DVR hard drives — retrieving footage from surveillance and security recorders after an incident.
BitLocker decryption — a healthy encrypted drive unlocked using the recovery key you supply.
Standard forensic investigation with a detailed report; a £400 + VAT forensic binary-image and deleted-file extraction is available without the report.
Band by band: one hard drive or SSD (NVMe included) is £300 + VAT; RAID, NAS and server work opens at £500 + VAT and follows the disk count; CCTV / DVR drives and BitLocker unlocks are £400 + VAT each; a standard forensic investigation with its detailed report comes in at £800 + VAT. A free diagnostic turns those bands into your own written figure.
Three questions place a recovery in its band — and none of them is how quickly you need it back:
Everything begins with a free diagnostic — the online assessment and the engineer's bench assessment at our Bristol location both cost nothing. You then receive a single fixed quote in writing, and the only decision left is yours: go ahead, or don't.
No fix, no fee covers logical recoveries only — deleted, formatted or corrupt files, or a sound drive your computer refuses to show. If that data cannot be returned, the bill is zero.
Where a drive carries electronic, mechanical, physical, water or fire damage, recovery means invasive work — a donor PCB or controller, head swaps, NAND chip-off or direct firmware-level repairs — so half the quoted price is paid upfront to cover parts and bench time, and the remainder falls due only when your data is recovered.
Forensic jobs — CCTV / DVR, BitLocker and ransomware work among them — are paid upfront in full. The standard investigation with a detailed report is £800 + VAT; the report-free forensic binary-image and deleted-file extraction is £400 + VAT.
Post or courier your media to our Bristol location and the free diagnostic is done within 2 working days of it arriving — so learning exactly where you stand costs nothing at all.
Four jobs of the kind Swansea customers send us every week, with the price and policy that applied — your own number is always confirmed in writing first.
No physical fault, just missing files — a logical £300 + VAT recovery covered by no fix, no fee, so a blank result costs you nothing.
Mechanical damage needing donor heads and clean-room time. Still £300 + VAT, but half the quote is paid upfront for parts, with the balance due only if your data comes home.
A four-disk RAID inside a NAS is imaged member by member and rebuilt in software. From £500 + VAT depending on the disk count; purely logical work stays no fix, no fee.
Recorder drives are handled as forensic work: £400 + VAT, payable upfront, with the relevant footage exported and documented for you.
Free diagnostic, fixed written quote, and the decision stays yours — nothing is billed until you approve.
Most customers post or courier their media to us.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive — we don't provide an internal drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) — only drives that can be removed and sent to us.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark the package for the attention of Bristol Data Recovery and we'll call you as soon as we diagnose your media.
Not sure what to send? Call 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.