DATA RECOVERY PRICING

Data Recovery Pricing Explained by a Lab That's Done It Since 1999

The data recovery cost at eProvided depends on what failed and how complicated the work is — never on how desperate you are. Our data recovery pricing starts with a free evaluation that tells us the device, the failure mode, and the engineering hours involved before any data recovery quote is given. How much does data recovery cost? It depends on your specific case — and we'll tell you the exact data recovery cost during your free evaluation, before any data recovery fee is charged.

We've quoted data recovery pricing the same honest way since 1999: the engineer who quotes your case is the engineer who recovers your data. No hidden fees, no minimum charges, no surprises. eProvided keeps one data recovery lab in Las Vegas — not a network of "labs" that are actually drop-off offices in other cities. That's how we keep professional data recovery cost lower than competitors charging thousands in minimums on any device they touch. Most cases finish in 1-3 days; complex cases take longer; every data recovery cost we quote is backed by our No Data, No Data Recovery Fee guarantee. That guarantee has stood since 1999, we don’t take cases we can’t solve. Free evaluation up front, fixed quote in writing, data recovery fees only if a successful recovery.

What Actually Drives Data Recovery Cost

The engineering work involved — not the device's brand, age, or capacity — determines the data recovery cost. When a device arrives at our lab in Las Vegas, an engineer goes through a specific assessment to estimate how many engineering hours your case will take. That estimate becomes your data recovery quote. How much does it cost to recover lost data depends almost entirely on what comes next in the assessment.

Five questions shape every data recovery cost quote:

1. What type of device is it? A USB stick has different paths than an SSD, smartphone, voice recorder, CompactFlash card, or a RAID array with mixed drives. Each device type carries a different data recovery cost profile because each requires different engineering disciplines.
2. Is the device connecting at all? A drive that mounts but shows scrambled file names is a different problem than a drive the operating system can't even see. The data recovery cost for a logical case differs sharply from physical reconstruction.
3. What kind of failure? Logical (file system corruption, deleted files), firmware (controller refuses to boot), mechanical (heads, motor, platters), electronic (PCB, surface-mount components), or chip-level (NAND failure requiring physical chip removal). Each failure mode maps to a different data recovery pricing tier.
4. Was there a triggering event? Water damage (especially smartphones — corrosion makes the data recovery cost higher the longer the device sits), drop damage, fire, lightning, or "I just forgot my password" (a cell phone data recovery case where the device may not be broken at all, and the quote will reflect that).
5. Are there moving parts? Spinning hard drives, solid-state, and monolithic flash devices each require different equipment and disciplines.

A locked-out smartphone where the user forgot the password may need an unlock workflow rather than physical work — a fundamentally different data recovery cost path than a phone that fell in a pool. A USB stick with a snapped connector might be repairable with PCB-level micro-soldering, or it might require chip-off NAND extraction with microscope work, and the data recovery quote reflects which path your case requires.

The questions above are exactly what our engineer asks during your free evaluation. By the end of that free evaluation, we know what your case requires — and that's the data recovery service cost we quote you.

Data Recovery Cost by Failure Type — Five Complexity Tiers

We classify cases — and therefore our data recovery pricing — by complexity rather than by sticker pricing, because complexity is what determines engineering time, equipment usage, and consumable parts. Within each tier the exact data recovery cost varies based on capacity, urgency, and specific device, but the engineering profile is consistent.

Tier 1 — Logical recovery. The device works mechanically and electronically; the data is intact but the file system, partition table, or directory structure has been damaged or overwritten. Examples: accidental format, corruption from improper ejection, deleted files. Software-led, fastest, lowest data recovery cost tier.

Tier 2 — Firmware recovery. The device's internal controller refuses to boot or report capacity correctly. Drive may show as 0 bytes, may not initialize, may report wrong serial. Requires manufacturer-specific firmware tools and service-area reconstruction. Common on hard drives and some flash controllers. Higher complexity than logical, lower data recovery cost than physical tiers.

Tier 3 — Mechanical recovery. Spinning hard drives with internal damage: head crash, motor seizure, platter scratches, broken read/write heads. The case requires opening the drive in a particle-controlled environment, sourcing matched donor parts (head stacks, PCBs, motors) consumed during your recovery to rebuild the platter-and-head assembly — the full mechanical hard drive recovery service workflow. Time and parts increase the cost — which is why mechanical hard drive recovery cost sits in a higher data recovery pricing tier than logical recovery.

Tier 4 — Chip-Off NAND recovery. When a USB flash drive's connector snaps with the PCB embedded, when an SSD's controller dies but the NAND chips are intact, when a microSD or monolithic flash device is physically damaged — we lift the NAND chip(s) from the board with a reflow station, read them with a chip programmer, and reconstruct the file system from raw NAND dumps. Microscope work and BGA-rework discipline. Components on these boards can be human-hair-sized, with 20-100+ on a single device. This is one of the most technically demanding disciplines in the industry — and a core engineering capability at our lab, not an add-on service line. Why is data recovery so expensive at this tier? Because microscope-grade soldering on components smaller than a grain of rice takes more skill and equipment than any other tier.

Tier 5 — RAID and multi-device recovery. Server-grade arrays where multiple drives have failed simultaneously, or where one drive failed and another failed during the rebuild. Requires reverse-engineering the RAID configuration (level, stripe size, parity rotation, member order) before any data can be assembled. Often the "drives" we recover are virtual images built from underlying physical reconstruction — sometimes Tier 3 mechanical work on each member drive first. RAID arrays carry the highest data recovery cost because they typically require multiple drives to be processed.

A small percentage of cases (about 10%) involve extreme damage — corrosion from prolonged water immersion, fire-damaged media, multi-level component failure. These take longer and the data recovery cost is higher. eProvided's reputation was built on those — including NASA missions where devices spent six weeks underwater off Kauai in corrosive salt water and the data still came back.

Data Recovery Cost by Device Type

Different storage devices have different data recovery cost profiles even within the same complexity tier. The links below take you to the specific page for each device type — every one includes the failure modes we see most often and how those translate to engineering work and final data recovery pricing.

• Hard drive recovery cost — See our hard drive recovery service. Mechanical failures dominate; capacity affects time but not complexity tier. Hard drive recovery cost lands in Tier 1-3 for most consumer cases, Tier 5 for RAID arrays.
• SSD recovery cost — See our SSD data recovery service. Controller failure and encryption are common; some encrypted SSDs are unrecoverable by design once the controller dies, and any reputable lab will tell you that. SSD recovery cost varies by controller-family and encryption status. How much does data recovery cost for an SSD versus an HDD? Different controller architectures lead to different engineering paths.
• USB flash drive recovery cost — See our USB flash drive recovery service. Snapped connectors and controller failures often lead to chip-off NAND work, which raises the cost.
• MicroSD card recovery cost — See our microSD card data recovery service. Monolithic — the controller and NAND are fused, requiring specialized monolithic dump techniques (see JEDEC flash memory standards for the underlying chip architectures).
• Broken memory card recovery cost — See our broken memory card recovery service. SD cards, CompactFlash, CFexpress, physical damage cases.
• Cell phone data recovery cost — See our cell phone data recovery service. Water-damaged phones, locked devices (forgotten passwords), broken screens, encrypted models.
• NAND flash recovery cost — See our NAND flash data recovery service. The discipline behind every chip-off case.
• Photo and digital image recovery cost — See our digital image recovery service. Photographer and content-creator focus.

We also work on voice recorders, CompactFlash cards, RAID arrays mixing SSDs and HDDs, dashcam memory cards, drone storage, and increasingly on car infotainment systems and connected home appliances. If a device stores data, we can quote a data recovery cost for it.

The eProvided Data Recovery Quote Process

How much does data recovery cost? You'll know the answer within one business day of your device arriving. From the moment your device arrives at our Las Vegas lab to the moment you have a data recovery quote in hand:

1. Step 1 — Free evaluation. A data recovery engineer with the authority to quote receives your device. We assess the device type, the symptoms, and the likely path. No data recovery fee for this step — your free evaluation costs nothing.
2. Step 2 — Diagnostic understanding. Visual inspection, electrical testing, and preliminary scans tell us what failed and what the engineering work looks like. We resolve 99% of cases to a specific data recovery cost in this phase.
3. Step 3 — Data recovery quote delivery (phone call preferred). We call you to walk through your data recovery quote. Phone conversations let us explain what we found, what we recommend, what the timeline looks like, and what your decision points are. If you can't take a call — you're at work, or your phone is the device we have — we email the data recovery quote instead.
4. Step 4 — Quote stability. Our data recovery pricing holds steady — our quotes stick 99% of the time. About 1% of cases require a mid-case adjustment if we discover something unexpected — rare parts, unusual chip configurations, or complications visible only once work has begun. We never adjust silently — you'll be on the phone with the engineer if the data recovery cost changes mid-case.
5. Step 5 — Your approval before work begins. Diagnostic work is free; the engineering work isn't. The handoff between those two phases is your explicit approval of the data recovery cost we've quoted.
6. Step 6 — Engineering work begins. Typical turnaround: 1-3 days for straightforward cases, around 10 days for difficult cases, longer for the 10% of work that involves extreme damage.
7. Step 7 — Rush option available. If you ship expedited next-day air and pay rush fees in advance, we can deliver your data via secure download in 24 hours or less — anywhere on earth.
8. Step 8 — Delivery and payment. Data is delivered via secure transfer or on a new storage device. Payment of the agreed data recovery cost is due on successful work only. No Data, No Data Recovery Fee.

How the No Data, No Data Recovery Fee Promise Works

How much does data recovery cost when a lab fails to recover your data? At most labs, you still pay for the attempt. Most labs charge for diagnostic attempts whether or not they recover anything. Some labs charge by the hour, accumulating fees during a case that might end with no data delivered. eProvided doesn't.

The promise is straightforward: if we don't recover your data, you don't pay the data recovery fee. Free evaluation up front. Engineering work only begins after you approve a fixed data recovery cost. You're never paying for failure.

This works because we've done data recovery pricing this way since 1999 and our success rate sits at 98% across tens of thousands of devices. We don't take work we don't think we can complete — and on the rare ones where the data turns out to be unrecoverable (severe physical destruction, irreversible chip damage), you owe us nothing for the engineering work. Outbound shipping for returning your device is the only customer cost in a failed case; the data recovery fee itself is waived.

If you've been quoted thousands by another lab and given a vague description of why, get a second opinion. Our free evaluation is exactly that — free — and our data recovery quote is honest.

What's Included in Every Data Recovery Cost (and What You Won't See)

Every successful case at eProvided includes a transparent breakdown of what your data recovery cost covers:

• Free evaluation — full diagnostic understanding before any work or fee
• Engineer-led data recovery quote — the person quoting is the person doing the work
• Fixed-price data recovery cost — what we tell you is what you pay, 99% of cases. There is no flat fee for data recovery here; data recovery pricing reflects the specific engineering work your case requires, not a one-size-fits-all minimum.
• Phone consultation — your case discussed personally, not via form responses
• Engineering work — engineering hours, equipment time, matched donor parts consumed during your recovery (head stacks, PCBs, motors when needed), microscope and chip-off lab time when needed
• Particle-controlled lab environment — clean, controlled, single-location
• Secure data handling — your recovered data is delivered to you, then securely wiped from our systems
• Secure delivery — recovered data transferred via secure download or returned on a new storage device
• No Data, No Data Recovery Fee guarantee — since 1999

What's NOT in the quoted data recovery cost:

• Inbound shipping (you ship the device to us)
• Outbound shipping for the recovered data (unless included in your service tier)

What you'll never see from us:

• Attempt fees on top of the data recovery fee
• Minimum-fee floors that inflate a small case
• Diagnostic charges that accumulate while we "look at it"
• Surprise mid-case data recovery cost increases without a phone conversation
• Service fees for devices we receive but don't end up working on

We encourage every customer to ask each lab they're considering for a free evaluation and a written data recovery quote before agreeing to ship anything.

Why eProvided's Data Recovery Pricing Reflects 26+ Years of Lab Engineering

Many labs you'll find online appear to have offices in every major city. They don't. The "office" you see in Atlanta or Boston is usually a Regus suite — a receptionist who's never opened a hard drive, taking your device and shipping it to a single central lab somewhere else. By the time your data recovery cost is quoted, that lab has paid rent on dozens of fake locations and a sales staff at each. That overhead ends up in your data recovery pricing.

eProvided keeps one data recovery lab in Las Vegas. One physical location. The engineer who quotes your data recovery cost is the engineer who performs the work. No shipping your device through middlemen who add markup at each step. No lease costs for offices that don't exist as real labs. When customers search for data recovery near me cost from anywhere in the country, we're transparent about it: we're in Las Vegas, you ship to us, and you get the best professional data recovery cost in the industry because of that lean structure.

This is why our data recovery pricing can typically beat major competitor quotes substantially — and why we offer engineering work without the multi-thousand-dollar minimum data recovery service cost common across the industry.

What we DO have that justifies our data recovery pricing:

• 26+ years of lab work. Since 1999. Across hundreds of thousands of devices.
• NAND chip-off discipline. Microscope-grade soldering on components the size of human hair — sometimes 20-100+ on a single device. This isn't an add-on service; it's a core engineering capability at our lab.
• NASA-grade reputation. Trusted on national-science programs where data loss isn't an option: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA DAVINCI (the Venus atmospheric probe mission), Mars Rover data-glitch investigation, Future Mars Mission data-storage consulting, parachute landing-test consulting for upcoming Mars missions, and the Helios mission — where the entire mission's storage devices spent six weeks submerged in corrosive salt water off Kauai after the prototype's June 2003 Pacific crash, and eProvided recovered the full mission dataset intact.
• Federal law enforcement support. Work in our background with the U.S. Department of the Navy, FBI counterterrorism case investigations (including bioterrorism-unit casework), and federal task forces aligned with the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) mission.
• Child-exploitation and human-trafficking investigation support. eProvided has been engaged to perform mobile device forensic data recovery, smartphone evidence extraction, and digital evidence analysis for cases involving the online exploitation, sextortion, and coercion of minors by foreign and domestic bad actors. Our work includes recovering deleted communications, tracing Instagram and other social-media account activity, identifying contacts the device owner interacted with, and analyzing photos taken or shared on the device — all to help investigators connect the dots between recovered data and active investigations. Investigators have told us directly that this work has helped save lives.
• Press recognition. Popular Mechanics Magazine, January 2005 (Jay Leno cover issue) — featured eProvided's work on internal onboard memory in digital cameras. Additional coverage in NBC, Bloomberg, PC Magazine, and Professional Photographer (PPA Magazine).

When you pay eProvided's data recovery cost, you're paying for 26+ years of accumulated lab discipline — not for office rent in cities we don't actually operate in.

When the Data Recovery Cost Is Worth It

How much does data recovery cost compared to losing the data forever? That comparison is the only one that matters. "Is data recovery worth the cost?" is the wrong question. The right question is: "What's the data worth?"

• Wedding photos that can't be re-taken
• A small business's accounting database that took years to build
• A novelist's manuscript that exists nowhere else
• Family photos of a child who's grown, or a parent who's gone
• Legal evidence in a case that hasn't been resolved
• Healthcare records, financial records, research records
• A photographer's portfolio after a card failure

For irreplaceable data, the data recovery cost is almost always less — measured in time, money, or grief — than accepting the loss. Affordable data recovery isn't about being cheap; it's about paying a fair data recovery cost for genuine work that gets your data back.

For replaceable data, the data recovery pricing scales with how much engineering effort is required. A free evaluation tells you what your case requires before you make any decision. There's no commitment, no fee, and no pressure. The data recovery quote you receive is a decision-support tool, not a sales pitch.

If your data is irreplaceable, contact us for a free evaluation. If you're not sure whether to invest in the data recovery cost, send us the device anyway — our free evaluation will tell you what's possible and what it would cost. From there, the decision is yours, and you've spent nothing to make it.