Pricing

With data recovery, there are no second chances. Choosing the right data recovery provider can mean the difference between a full recovery or an unrecoverable disaster.

If you’re concerned about how much your data recovery will cost, you’re not alone. At CBL, we are so confident in our processes and pricing that we can openly share these insights with our clients. Our knowledge is backed by a 90% recovery rate and 20+ years of data recovery experience.

When choosing a data recovery provider, the question of cost is always at the forefront. Our advice: choose a trusted data recovery company who will evaluate your device and offer a free, no-commitment data recovery quote.

Many recovery cases will have an underlying problem with their media which needs to be addressed first in order to provide a quality recovery service. Simply trying to “push through” media errors, or letting a commercial software scan slowly run for hours or days will cause more harm than good and also put your data at risk. The first data recovery attempt will always yield the highest chance of success.

There are also secondary factors which can push the cost of a recovery slightly higher. Units which have been encrypted will require extra steps and time to decrypt and verify the file system. Hardware cases which have media damage in critical areas may also require extra steps after the physical work has been done in order to save the files. Custom recovery solutions can also be much more expensive for special cases where programming needs to be implemented or new software developed to address a rare or unseen issue.

A qualified data recovery engineer will be able to put together an effective plan to save your files, and what sets CBL apart from other providers and big-box stores is our understanding and capabilities of the issues with physically damaged hard drives. We simply have the best data recovery engineers in the country.

Evaluation Services:

To provide an exact quote for your project we must complete an evaluation, for your convenience we offer you two types of evaluations.

Free Evaluation (HDD, SSD and Smartphones):

  • Free Ground Shipping Label (for all first attempt only)
  • Free Diagnostic (24hrs – 48hrs)

Rush Evaluation (RAID, Server and Enterprise Solutions – 2 disks minimum):

  • Priority Service at NO Additional Cost (your request moves to the front of the line)
  • Free Air Next Day Shipping Label
  • Diagnostic & Quotation (2hrs)

Data Recovery Services Pricing:

Pricing is based on the complexity and total capacity of your hard drive, not the number of files or the amount of data stored. Physical procedures that require a clean room and parts replacement are more costly than those that do not. No upfront payment is required to begin working on your case.

  • External/Internal SATA/USB HDD up to 1TB (Logical – Physical Procedures): $800.00 – $1,100.00
  • External/Internal SATA/USB HDD 2TB (Logical – Physical Procedures): $900.00 – $1,300.00
  • External/Internal SATA/USB HDD 3TB (Logical – Physical Procedures): $1,000.00 – $1,500.00
  • External/Internal SATA/USB HDD 4TB (Logical – Physical Procedures): $1,100.00 – $1,700.00
  • External/Internal SATA/USB HDD 5TB (Logical – Physical Procedures): $1,200.00 – $1,900.00
  • External/Internal SATA HDD +6TB (please contact for an estimated price)
  • Enterprise SAS HDD (please contact for an estimated price)
  • SATA/M2 Solid State Drives (starting price 256GB): $1,100.00
  • NVMe Solid State Drives (starting price 256GB): $1,600.00
  • PCIe Solid State Drives (starting price 256GB): $2,100.00
  • Standard RAID SAS/SATA (price per drive up to 1TB): $600.00 + $100 per extra TB (flat rate)
  • Fast Rebuild RAID Algorithms – Adapt RAID, HP-EVA, Compellent, Dell VxRail (price per drive up to 1TB): $1,000.00 + $100 per extra TB
  • Laptop with hard drive soldered on the board: $2,100.00 (flat rate)
  • Smartphone: $1,300.00 (flat rate)

Our pricing always includes a new hard drive (or flash drive) to ensure the safety of your recovered data. The provided drive will be large enough to accommodate all your recovered data and may not be the same size as the defective disk.

Encrypted Hard Drives: Customers must provide the encryption key to allow data recovery. Please ensure you have the encryption key ready when sending your hard drive for service. If you do not have the encryption key, please do not send your hard drive.

Our service follows a no-data, no-charge policy. If we cannot recover your data, or if the recovered data is not useful (corrupted), you won’t be charged for our service, however, return shipping costs are on you.

Currently, we are not taking Tapes, Flash Drives, Memory Cards (of any kind), CDs/DVDs, due to low demand and/or increased complexity/costs.

Additional Services and Fees:

Emergency Fee (Enterprise Solutions – Servers, NAS, Storages):

  • $0.00

Emergency Fee (HDD/SSD):

  • $350.00

Return Shipping: Ground Shipping

  • $20.00 Flat Rate

Active Student/Military Discount:

  • 15% Discount available with proof of active ID.

Computer Repair Shops and IT Partners:

  • 15% Discount on our service

Over the past couple of years we have seen a high number of Seagate units with system area corruption caused by an extremely large amount of media errors on its disk surface.

Customers may notice some kind of sluggishness, or slowing down of their computer leading up to the crash. Many times people think their operating system needs to get cleaned up, or maybe the computer needs more RAM. Once in a while though, it’s actually the hard drive. While this kind of issue is classified as a hardware problem, it is generally something that can be solved outside of our clean room environments.

Approximately one-quarter of the cases we see are this (or a similar) issue. Some Western Digital and Toshiba 2.5” models will have occurrences of system area corruption as well.

An external hard drive that has fallen off a desk, or a laptop that was inadvertently dropped, will cause some major physical issues to the functionality of the unit. This is where similar failures can have various outcomes.

Most commonly, there will be impact damage to the read/write heads, the reading mechanism of a hard drive. They will twist or skew slightly from their original configuration, sometimes becoming completely twisted or disengaged entirely from the actuator arm. Most current model hard drives will have a ‘park ramp’ where the read/write heads live when the unit is not in use. Impact while parked does not cause damage to the disk surfaces (the platters) directly but will damage the read/write heads well enough that once powered on the read/write heads will come in contact with the platters and immediately start scraping away the metal alloys which hold the electromagnetic signal, which in turn are your files.

Dropping a hard drive while in use will almost invariably result in an immediate head crash as the read/write heads are on the disk surface and will come into instant contact upon impact. As hard drive platters spin very quickly even a momentary contact can have huge repercussions.

A drop can also cause issues with the spindle motor assembly, the component that turns the disks at such high speeds. It is also the component the platters are installed on. A spindle motor recovery is complex in its simplicity. In this case, the platters will need to be removed and transplanted onto a new drive shaft. Hard drives with multiple platters need special care as the disks are aligned on X, Y & Z axes. Any disruption to this relationship, even the smallest, tiniest of miscues can cause permanent, irreversible data loss. It is a very delicate and time-consuming procedure, one that only those with the most data recovery experience will handle.

But not all dropped hard drives need to be so costly. Sometimes, when a hard drive has fallen, the read/write heads will impact the disk surfaces and magnetically stick to the platters. Similar to stiction-related issues seen in the 1990’s, the cohesive friction between the read/write heads and platters prevents the hard drive from spinning up. And in a case like this, that’s probably a good thing because you don’t want it to spin up and generate a head crash.

This is far and away the most commonly reported symptom of a hard drive failure. The clicking noises are in fact the read/write heads inside the hard drive trying to read specific code from the disks, and not being able to do so correctly.

What is preventing the read/write heads from picking up the necessary signal is the first question CBL’s data recovery engineers will try to answer when evaluating a failed unit. There could be problems with the media surface; damage to the read/write head assembly; electrical or PCB board-related problems where the hard drive is actually reading properly but that signal is not getting translated properly; and even sometimes issues with the spindle motor assembly where it’s not spinning up to the required RPMs.

These are problems that can only be addressed by a data recovery engineer. The disk surfaces and read/write heads will be examined under a microscope for defects. The read/write heads and electronics will be tested to determine where the faults lie. More often than not, a clicking hard drive will be due to some damage on the disk surface caused by contact from the read/write heads.

These are projects that require intensive clean-room-based physical work, replacing damaged components, coaxing a unit to achieve a consistent read, capturing a low-level data stream of signal from the original unit and then re-doing this work until the entire disk is saved.

With today’s current selection of high-capacity hard drives and condensed data sector mapping, if platter damage is visible under a microscope, it’s a major issue. If platter damage is visible to the naked eye, it’s almost a non-starter. For every visible ring on the disk surface there are dozens, if not hundreds, more visible under the microscope.

This media type is trending upwards right now in terms of usage, and if the costs of flash memory decrease significantly in the coming years, SSD units could become the de facto. The primary benefit to computer users is speed. Faster boot-up times and faster access to files.

SSDs are also more resilient to physical damage, and with the small form factor are becoming popular in laptops, but they are not infallible. Solid state drives, like USBs and SD cards, are more susceptible to electronic discharge than their hard drive cousins. With 4 or 5 times more memory chips, coupled with the AES-256 bit encryption security and a few other bells and whistles offered by SSD manufacturers the recovery processes is usually much more complicated than USB thumb drives.

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