Hard Disk Data Recovery Cost
Every day, our data recovery consultants answer 100+ phone calls. In most cases, a client calls if they:
- Have unintentionally deleted some crucial data;
- See an error message related to the hard drive;
- Hear strange sounds from the hard drive;
- Find that their hard drive is not recognized by their computer;
- Have accidentally dropped the hard drive or caused physical damage to it; or
- Can't access important data on their hard drive.
After describing the problem, the client then expects the answers to these questions.
- How much does HDD recovery cost?
- How much time will it take to recover data from my hard drive?
- Do I need to pay anything for the inspection of the storage media?
- Can you recover data from my physically damaged hard drive?
- Can I use data recovery software to recover my data myself?
Stellar® Data Recovery brings you every data recovery option you might need at a transparent and reasonable data recovery cost.
Our data recovery charges start from ₹3,500.
Note: This is a highly generalized estimate. It doesn't consider the variable factors related to HDD data recovery. For a more accurate data recovery cost estimate, read on.
In case the problem is accidental data deletion, you might be able to recover it using Stellar® Data Recovery software. The monthly license fee of our data recovery software starts at ₹3,999 per month. You can also opt for yearly license at heavily discounted prices. View Offers
We will now discuss the key factors that influence the cost of data recovery from hard drives. This is our attempt to maintain transparency in hard disk data recovery prices. This information will also help you make sense of the vast difference in data recovery cost estimates of professional services and those of makeshift cabin-style data recovery services available locally.
Six Key Factors That Influence Data Recovery Costs
1. Type of Data Storage Device
- Most of the hard drives we receive for data recovery have storage space of 1TB or higher.
- Next in line are somewhat older devices ranging from 256GB to 1TB hard drives.
- Other storage media include SSDs, Removable media drives, RAID server disks, and SD cards.
Each storage media type differs vastly. It may be easier to recover data from a 2 TB hard drive as compared to a 128 GB SSD or an 8 GB SD card.
Hard drives vary in terms of their:
- Type [SATA, eSATA, USB PATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE Fiber Channel, Firewire];
- Platter size [2.5-inch and 3.5-inch diameter]; and
- Interface [parallel ATA (PATA, also called IDE or EIDE), SATA, SCSI, Fiber Channel, and SAS].
| Type of Data Storage Device | |||
| Hard disk drives (HDDs) | RAID Servers | Laptop | |
| Solid state drives (SSDs) | NAS | Magnetic Tape Drives | |
| Pen Drives | CCTV | MacBook | |
| Memory cards | SD Cards | Optical Media | |
2. Problem Type: Logical, Physical, and Firmware
- Install a free Data Recovery software on a hard drive.
- Connect the hard drive from which you want to recover data as an external drive.
- Use Data Recovery software to scan your drive, preview your files, and recover your data.
At times, even logical issues can be challenging.
- In such scenarios, professional data recovery software may not be able to retrieve 100% of your data. Moreover, users often prefer that a data recovery expert inspect their storage device before attempting recovery. This can affect data recovery cost.
- Data recovery costs will increase, when your hard drive is encrypted using special encryption technology. Our engineers put in extra R&D time to decrypt the drive before attempting recovery.
- Sometimes, the recovered data is corrupt, e.g., in case of a malware attack. In such cases, we have to attempt repair functions so that your recovered files are accessible. This necessitates further investigation and logical treatment of the data for complete and meaningful recovery.
Stellar® data recovery professionals have working knowledge of all types of hardware- and software-based Full Disk Encryption (FDE) as well as third-party encryption algorithms.
Note: Recovery from FDE-encrypted HDDs/SSDs is contingent upon the availability of username and password.
Data recovery costs in case of physical damage
- Recovering data from a physically damaged hard drive is complex.
- Opening your hard drive for diagnostics in an unprotected environment is fatal for its fragile components and could worsen the damage.
- Stellar® Data Recovery experts rely on specialized tools and state-of-the-art Class 100 Clean Room Lab to operate on your physically damaged hard drive.
In most cases, successful data recovery demands a combination of logical and physical recovery expertise.
| Data loss situation | Logical | Physical |
| Problem Type |
|
|
3. Storage Media Capacity
The cost of data recovery is directly proportional to the storage capacity of the hard disk drive.
Why? You need to understand the data recovery process first. After receiving a physically damaged device, our engineers:
- Open it in a state-of-the-art Class 100 Clean Room.
- Identify damaged physical components.
- Find matching donor components from our massive inventory of 15,000+ donor drives.
- Replace damaged components with healthy donor components.
- Operate the damaged hard disk at a highly-reduced RPM speed to prevent further data loss.
- Create an image of the damaged hard disk.
- Use data recovery techniques and software to recover data from the hard drive image.
The answer to your question is linked to the 5th step—operating the hard drive at a reduced speed.
Normally, the time to read a completely healthy 1 TB hard drive is 4 hours. In recovery mode (at heavily reduced speed), the time to read becomes more than 12 hours. Depending on the extent of damage, this could even be 2–10 days.
For the time taken to read the damaged HDD, we need to:
- Deploy sufficient engineering and managerial oversight;
- Consume equivalent computing resources; and
- Use multiple hard drives (for cloning and spare transplants).
So, a flat fee for hard drive data recovery isn't practical.
| Hard drive capacity | Factor of cost/complexity |
| Less than 1TB | Spare parts are difficult to identify, find, replace, and transplant |
| More than 1TB | In addition to all of the above, more machine hours are required to read data |
4. Availability of Spare Transplants for Hard Drive
Availability of spares affects the cost of data recovery. These spare parts include (but are not limited to):
- Read/write head
- Head actuator
- Spindle motor
- Printed circuit board (PCB)
- Cables and connectors
- Configuration items (like jumpers and switches)
Let's consider an example.
You need to recover data from a damaged 256 GB hard drive purchased in 2015. It's highly likely this hard drive model has been discontinued and hence, is now obsolete. Its components (such as the read/write head) are hard to find.
However, you can expect successful data recovery with Stellar, even for old hard drives. That’s because we have our 15,000+ donar hard drive inventory models available. This means we have the replacement parts necessary to recover data from any kind of hard drive—however old or obscure. In fact, for every hard drive we process, we use spares from 2–3 hard drives for data recovery.
If you want to see the success of our more complex recovery cases, you can also check our case studies for all types of devices and models.
5. Tampered/Untampered Hard Drive
Tampering or mishandling is quite commonplace because of unprofessional and untrained data recovery practitioners.
All tampering isn’t intentional. Sometimes, unprofessional data recovery service providers haphazardly experiment with diagnostic tactics. Such recklessness further damages the hard drive.
Some of these tactics are:
- Trying to reboot from the failed drive.
- Switching on and off excessively (This can worsen the scratching on your hard drive).
- Running a file system repair utility (such as chkdsk) unnecessarily/repeatedly.
- Opening the case of the hard drive outside a state-of-the-art Class 100 Clean Room.
- Using unlicensed recovery software to read data from a hard drive that has bad sectors.
- Replacing the PCB on your failed drive.
Note: These tactics are useful only in very specific cases and shouldn’t be used for experimental diagnostics.
Chances of data recovery from tampered hard disk drive are meager as compared to that from a non-tampered drive. The extent and complexity of repairs required for a tampered hard drive are massive. Consequently, this increases the cost of data recovery from a tampered HDD.
6. Expected Turnaround Time
Data recovery charges also vary as per your urgency to recover your data. If the demand to retrieve data is immediate, the cost of recovery will be high.
Generally, data recovery from a 2TB hard drive could take up to a month of effort. If you need this done in 2 weeks, we need to deploy additional workforce and technical & technological resources. This has a direct bearing on the recovery cost.
Note: The six key factors detailed above are relevant not only for hard disk drives but for SSDs, SD cards, pen drives, CF cards, etc. as well.
Note: The six key factors detailed above are relevant not only for hard disk drives but for SSDs, SD cards, pen drives, CF cards, etc. as well.
Solid-State Drive (SSD) Data Recovery Cost
SSDs don't use a platter (as in hard drives) to store data. The absence of moving parts (such as the read/write head and spindle) means the SSD is more robust (less noise, less heating, less friction).
You can think of an SSD as a combination of several interconnected ICs. An SSD is essentially 4 components: controller, cache, NAND memory chipsets, and capacitor.
The data recovery cost for SSDs is more as compared to HDDs. This is because:
- SSDs have a more complex data storage architecture as compared to standard hard drives.
- The TRIM feature makes data recovery from SSDs nearly impossible. (For more information, check our blog: Recovery from TRIM Enabled SSDs
- Readability of the NAND chipset is crucial for recovery, and this can only be determined after a data recovery expert has inspected the SSD.
- Locating data on an SSD is more complex than on an HDD.
- Damage to NAND flash chips of an SSD is difficult to overcome.
- Memory chip density, error correction code variables, encryption, and encoding variations complicate matters further.
SD Card/Flash Media Data Recovery Cost
Most commonly used flash data storage devices in India are SD cards, eMMC, pen drives, CF cards, etc. These portable storage media are generally used to store and transfer data, such as documents, presentations, photos, videos, etc., from one device to another.
- For simple data loss cases, data recovery charges for SD cards and flash memory devices start from ₹3,500.
- Data recovery cost for SD cards increases with the storage capacity of the card.
Users have a mindset that data recovery from SD cards, pen drives, and memory cards should be cheap. They associate data recovery cost with the selling cost of these cards. However, this is not the case. One should not compare the price of the data storage device with the cost of data recovery from the same device.
In SD cards, memory cards, and CF cards, the most common reasons for data loss are device formatting, file deletion (logical case), and sometimes, physical damage.
- For logical cases, you can also try our DIY professional data recovery software.
- In case of a physically damaged SD card/flash storage drive, only a data recovery expert can help retrieve your data. There is no alternative except to opt for a professional data recovery service.
The data recovery cost of a physically damaged SD card will depend on the type and extent of damage. This process involves chip-level analysis and recovery, which is considerably more complex. Hence, data recovery charges may be higher.
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Data Recovery Service Charges for HDDs, SSDs, SD Cards, etc. in India
Following data recovery charges are applicable at our data recovery centers in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Mumbai, Noida, Pune, and Vashi.
| Device Type |
| Capacity | Price Range | |||||
| Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) |
|
| Up to 16 TB | Inspection charge: ₹999
| ||||
| Solid-State Drives (SSDs), SD/CF Cards, and other Flash Media |
| Up to 4 TB | Inspection charge: ₹999
| |||||
| RAID Servers, Virtual Servers, Cloud Servers, NAS, and SAN | Servers can comprise either SSDs or HDDs. Physical problems in servers vary accordingly. | Depends on the size of the array | Quote provided on demand | |||||
Also Read : Why Hard Drive Data Recovery is complex?
Stellar® Data Recovery Software Price in India
Stellar® offers premium data recovery software at reasonable prices for our customers in India.
- 100% made in India
- Recover all types of lost data
- Dedicated products for home users as well as small and big businesses
- Available at a discounted price for Indian customers
- 1-month license offer for our top DIY data recovery software
- Unlimited data recovery for 1 month.
- Best price guarantee
Stellar® Data Recovery Software Cost in India
| Software Name | 1 Month License | 1 Year License |
| Stellar® Data Recovery for Windows | ₹3,999 | ₹4,999 |
| Stellar® Data Recovery Professional for Windows | ₹4,499 | ₹5,999 |
| Stellar® Data Recovery Premium for Windows | ₹4,999 | ₹7,999 |
Stellar Photo Recovery Software Cost in India
| Software Name | 1 Month License | 1 Year License |
| Stellar® Photo Recovery | ₹3,499 | ₹3,999 |
| Stellar® Photo Recovery Professional | ₹3,999 | ₹4,999 |
| Stellar® Photo Recovery Premium | ₹4,499 | ₹5,999 |
Customers can upgrade to 1-year license version of the above-mentioned software or can simply buy 1-year license version with a heavy discount.
About The Author
Data Recovery Expert & Content Strategist
