Actual numbers. For Aberdeen, for the shire, and for anywhere in Scotland or the rest of the UK that has a post office. Six bands cover nearly everything this lab recovers, and your own figure goes in writing when the diagnostic ends, never into an invoice afterwards. VAT on top.
Asking the price costs nothing. Diagnose online or at the Edinburgh bench. The only invoice that ever arrives is one you agreed to first, and logical work holds its no fix, no fee cover.
Hardware and fault decide the number. A worried voice on the telephone has never yet decided it. Nearly everything Aberdeen and the shire send down settles into one of the six bands here, and the number against your job is written out the moment the free diagnostic ends. VAT is added to every one of them.
Pen drives and cards. SD, microSD and CompactFlash, read off the flash chips themselves.
One hard drive or SSD, whichever machine it lived in. Laptop, tower, Mac, external case. NVMe blades sit here too.
Arrays, NAS boxes, servers. Each member is imaged separately, so the number climbs with the number of disks.
Recorder disks out of CCTV and DVR boxes, with the clips you need exported and written up.
BitLocker decryption on a sound drive, where the recovery key can be produced.
Standard forensic investigation, written report included. Without the report, the binary-image and deleted-file service is £400 + VAT.
Put briefly: one hard drive, or one SSD, is £300 + VAT with NVMe included. RAID, NAS and server jobs open at £500 + VAT, climbing with the disk count. A CCTV / DVR disk or a BitLocker unlock is £400 + VAT. The standard forensic investigation is £800 + VAT, report and all. To get your own number, start with the free diagnostic.
Panic is not among them, and neither is a deadline. There are three inputs and no others:
Everything opens at the same point, a free diagnostic. Nothing is charged online. The engineer's examination at the Edinburgh lab is not charged for either. What comes back is a single fixed quote in writing, and taking it or leaving it is your business.
Logical work carries no fix, no fee. That covers deleted or formatted files, corruption, and a sound drive that simply will not present itself. Cannot bring that data home? The invoice is zero.
Find electronic, mechanical, physical, water or fire damage at the bench and one condition attaches before invasive work opens: 50% of the quoted price is payable upfront. Donor boards, head swaps, NAND chip-off and firmware surgery burn parts and clean-bench hours however it ends. The balance falls due when your data is back in your hands, and not a day before.
Forensic work — CCTV / DVR footage, BitLocker unlocking and ransomware cases among it — is paid upfront in full. The standard investigation is £800 + VAT with its complete written report; where no report is needed, the forensic binary-image and deleted-file extraction comes in at £400 + VAT.
Media reaches Edinburgh 130 miles down the A90, or overnight by post, and that diagnostic is finished 2 working days from it landing. Knowing precisely where you stand costs nothing whatsoever.
Four jobs of the sort that come down from the North-East in a normal week, showing which band each fell into and on what terms. Wherever yours lands, the number is fixed on paper before any tool is lifted.
An Inverurie joiner, one folder dropped in the wastebasket at speed, hardware in fine order. Logical work at £300 + VAT under no fix, no fee. Nothing back would have meant nothing owed.
Heads down on the platters, so donor parts and clean-bench hours. Same £300 + VAT band. Half goes in before the invasive stage starts, the rest when the files change hands.
Four members, imaged one at a time and rebuilt in software. From £500 + VAT, priced by the disk. A rebuild that never leaves logical ground keeps no fix, no fee.
Recorder work runs on the forensic footing. £400 + VAT, settled before it begins, and the relevant clips are exported and written up for an insurer or the police.
Free diagnosis first. The written figure second. Nothing happens at all until you say go.
Nearly everything on this bench came by tracked, insured post. It is the safest way to shift a failing drive, and a parcel handed in at a North-East post office is usually here the next working day.
Still bolted into a laptop, desktop, MacBook, iMac, server or CCTV / DVR box? Get the hard drive or SSD out first. The bare drive travels on its own. Stripping machines down is not a job this lab takes on. Flash soldered to a motherboard, as on Apple Silicon Macs and a couple of very thin laptops, is our one flat no: if it will not unbolt, it cannot be worked on.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Address it for the attention of Edinburgh Data Recovery. From Aberdeen that is roughly 130 miles and two and a half hours down the A90, or next working day by tracked post if you would rather not make the run. You get a call the moment it is booked onto the bench.
Not sure what belongs in the box? Ring 0800 689 0668 before you tape it shut, or work through the free online diagnostic.