How much does data recovery cost?

It can be frustrating and even distressing when your device crashes and stops working, especially with your personal or business files at risk of being lost. When your thoughts turn to data recovery, your next thought is probably, how much is going to cost to retrieve my data?

Unfortunately, this is a hard question to answer with many factors affecting the price. For example, some data recovery providers aren’t upfront about total costs or how much data they can recover.

Our expert team here at Ontrack will always give you an accurate and transparent cost for recovering your data once they’ve been able to know the details of your device. But until then, what is the cost of data recovery?

How much does data recovery cost?

The cost of recovering data from a damaged storage device is determined not by the quantity of data or the size of the drive, but rather by the time and effort that goes into getting the data you need.

For example, it could take minutes to access 10TB of data from a hard drive that has been affected by a simple virus, but hours or longer to get 5MB of vital data from a severely fire-damaged smartphone. In this case, the latter would still cost more even though the volume of data is much lower.

What Primary Factors Affect Data Recovery Costs?

Several factors can affect the cost of data recovery, including:

• Replacement parts - A reputable data recovery business will keep a well-stocked collection of replacement parts that can be used when trying to repair a device enough to retrieve the data. However, some parts are not easy to find, which can mean buying in the part, or an entirely new device, to be able to recover missing data.
• Research and development – Investing time and money in new tools and technologies helps a recovery lab stay effective, especially in line with the rapid evolution of cybersecurity attacks
• Replacement device - Once the data has been recovered, the engineers must place it onto a new storage device and send it to the customer.
• Quality guarantee – Even after the data recovery process has been completed, the data needs to be checked to ensure all necessary data works and the customer receives the correct replacement device.
• Facilities and infrastructure - The cost of data recovery has to cover not only the cost of running the company but also the cost of the cleanroom, recovery lab, tools, specialist equipment and donor parts.  
• Data protection - Data recovery companies handle huge amounts of data belonging to their customers and must keep it all safe. The cost of training staff, maintaining IT security, and properly disposing of customer data all need to be covered in the data recovery cost.
• Customer service – Any reputable data recovery company will have a reliable customer service team to assist and support its customers.

Is data recovery cost dependent on the device type?

Yes, the price of data recovery can depend on the device that has been damaged. However it's important to note that it’s not the device that affects the cost, but the type of storage within the device, and the damage done to that storage.

The different types of storage media include hard drives, RAID servers and NAS to name a few. This means that recovering data from a hard drive will be different from recovering it from a NAS. The cost of retrieving lost data will depend on the type, size and interface of the storage device, and the type of damage incurred.