15 Oct 2026 · 7 min read
How much does data recovery cost in Melbourne?
From $150 for deleted files to well over $1,000 for a drive that has to be opened. What decides the price, and how to avoid making it worse.
Data recovery is the job with the widest price range in this trade, and that confuses people. Two customers can describe exactly the same thing ("my laptop died and I need my photos") and end up with very different bills. The reason is that "dead drive" covers several unrelated faults.
What it costs, by type of failure
| The computer died, the drive didn'tThe laptop won't start but the drive is fine; we copy the files off | From $150 |
|---|---|
| Deleted files, formatted or corrupted driveThe drive works; the files need recovering | From $150 |
| Failing drive that still spinsOften includes a new drive to copy everything onto | Quoted first |
| Clicking, grinding or not detectedCan run well over $1,000 if the drive has to be opened in a clean room | Quoted first |
| Failed SSDHarder than an old-style hard drive once the controller fails | Quoted first |
The assessment is free in every case, and you get the price before anything is spent.
Example: a failing 2TB drive
A recent job: a 2TB drive full of family photos and work files that had started failing. The total came to $600, and $250 of that was a new 2TB drive to copy everything onto, so the customer walked away with the files on a healthy drive rather than on the one that was dying. Where the money goes: the recovery work, plus somewhere safe to put the data.
Why some recoveries cost over $1,000
A drive that clicks, grinds or isn't detected usually has a physical fault: the read heads or the motor. Fixing that means opening the drive in a dust-free clean room and working on it with specialist parts, which is slow, skilled work. Those jobs commonly cost well over $1,000, and the price depends on the drive and the damage. We assess it for free and tell you the likely cost and the odds before you decide.
Things that make recovery cheaper (and more likely to work)
- Stop using the drive. Every minute a failing drive runs can reduce what survives.
- Don't keep restarting it. Repeated boot attempts lose more data than the original fault.
- Don't install recovery software on the drive you're recovering from. It can overwrite the very files you want back.
- Tell us what matters most. If budget is tight, we would rather prioritise the family photos than a folder of program files.
What we can't recover
We do not offer iPhone data recovery. Check Recently Deleted and any existing iCloud, Google Photos or computer backups first; permanently deleted files may not be recoverable. For laptops, desktops, external drives, SSDs, USB sticks, SD cards and Android phones, we assess the device and explain what is possible before work starts.
How the price is agreed
The assessment is free. We work out which kind of failure it is, what is likely to come back, and what it will cost, before you commit to anything. If we can't recover your data, you pay nothing.
Afterwards, the cheapest data recovery is the one you never need. A backup that runs by itself costs $90–160 to set up properly; see backups: the one thing everybody skips. Full details: data recovery.