Quotes from RMB 200 to RMB 5,000: who should you believe?
Your drive fails, you search online, and the numbers make no sense. One person says they paid RMB 300. Another paid several thousand. The cheap quotes start at "RMB 99" and the expensive ones open at two or three thousand. Is the industry rigged, or is each broken drive simply a different job? This article lays out how data recovery is priced, so you can judge what your own drive should cost and which quotes are traps.
Why the range is so wide: "data recovery" is not one job
The same four words cover wildly different work. That is the root of the price span:
- Fault type sets the base price. A logical failure (accidental deletion, a wrong format, a lost partition) never touches the hardware. We work from a clone, which is why it is cheap. A physical failure (a damaged head, a problem with the platters) means opening the drive in a cleanroom and replacing the head assembly. Equipment, parts and technician time are all hard costs, so the price is an order of magnitude higher.
- Difficulty sets the tier. Even among physical failures, an easy-to-match head is not the same as a rare one, and intact platters are not the same as lightly scratched ones; the workload can be several times larger. A RAID or NAS job depends on the array type, the number of drives and the failure mode, and is far more complex than a single disk.
- Data volume drives labor hours. Recovering 50GB and recovering 4TB are not in the same league when it comes to imaging, verification and delivery.
- Deadlines drive the surcharge. Rush work means technician overtime and equipment reserved for one job. The industry norm is a surcharge; ours is 50%.
That is why a reputable shop quotes the same way every time: test and assess first, identify the fault type and difficulty, give a range, and start only after you agree. Anyone who quotes a firm price without testing is either guessing or planning to raise it later.
Four things to do before you ask for a price
- Identify the fault type, and stop experimenting. A clicking noise on power-up means a physical fault: do not power it on again. A drive that is detected but has lost its files is a logical fault: do not write to it again. For help telling them apart, see our guide to HDD data recovery. Getting this step right saves money directly. Plenty of drives are killed by "trying" them, and the repair cost doubles after a failed attempt.
- Have three answers ready before you call. What type of storage is it (hard drive, SSD, USB flash drive, RAID)? What is the symptom (deleted files, a format, clicking, not detected)? How important is the data? With those three answers, a phone quote can be a reliable range.
- Insist on diagnosis before a quote. The proper flow is diagnosis and assessment, then a written or verbal quote, then your approval, then the work, then delivery of the recovered data and payment. Any "ultra-low price" that skips diagnosis deserves suspicion.
- Ask what happens if it fails. Get a clear answer to "do you charge if you cannot recover it?" Our rule is to charge only on success. That is standard practice in the trade, and only a shop confident in its work will put it in writing.
Beware the bait-and-switch. The "RMB 99 data recovery" and "RMB 199 all-inclusive" ads are there to get you in the door. Once the drive is open, the story changes: the platters are scratched, it is urgent, you need parts. The bill climbs layer by layer to several thousand RMB. Many of these shops have no cleanroom at all; they damage your drive and then tell you it cannot be saved. Remember the iron rule: recovery costs equipment and labor, so a genuine cleanroom head swap cannot exist at RMB 99. Rule out any quote that claims otherwise.
When you have to call a professional
Once the data matters enough that losing it would hurt, go straight to a professional and stop improvising: no repeated software scans after a deletion, no repeated power-ups on a drive that is clicking, no cheap shop that opens a failed disk on a workbench. Every year we take in many "second visit" drives, and the share of those we can save is clearly lower than for drives that arrived untouched. Diagnosis is your zero-cost trial: sending a drive in costs nothing; you can repair it if the quote suits you, and take it away if it does not. For the full service flow, see the data recovery overview; for complex cases, see RAID recovery.
What we charge: the 2026 price list
| Item | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnosis and assessment | RMB 0 | We test and assess, then quote before any repair |
| Logical failure (deletion, format, lost partition) | RMB 300–800 | Depends on data volume and complexity |
| Bad-sector data extraction | RMB 500–1,500 | Head intact, platters have bad sectors |
| Physical failure, cleanroom recovery | RMB 800–3,000 | Head assembly replacement; price follows capacity and how hard the part is to match |
| RAID/NAS recovery | From RMB 2,000 | Depends on array type, drive count and damage |
| Rush service | 50% on top of the quoted price | Same-day or next-day delivery |
Every job is tested first, quoted first, and started only after you confirm. You pay when the recovery succeeds; if it fails, you pay nothing.
A real case: the same drive, two quotes
In March 2026 a customer was drawn in by an online ad for "RMB 99 data recovery" and shipped a Seagate 2TB drive that was making noise. After opening it, the shop told him the platters were scratched and a cleanroom recovery would be RMB 3,800. He became suspicious and brought the drive to us. The fault was a damaged head; the platters were fine, and a normal cleanroom recovery was all it needed. We replaced the head in the cleanroom and recovered 1.7TB, charging RMB 1,800 under our physical-recovery rate. The other shop's handling had left two contamination spots that cost us an extra day to clean up. One drive, two experiences: RMB 3,800 and nearly ruined, or RMB 1,800 and all the data back. The difference is whether the shop has a cleanroom and whether it quotes the fault it actually finds.
Where to find us
We are at No. 3-8 Jinlong Road, Dalong Street, Panyu District, Guangzhou, and we cover both Panyu and Nansha districts on site. Call 18825126836 or 020-39029800, Monday to Saturday, 09:00-18:00.