Every data recovery company on the internet advertises “no data, no fee.” It sounds like a straightforward promise: if they don’t get your files back, you don’t pay.
The phrase is doing a lot of quiet work. Here’s what to check before you rely on it — at any lab, including mine.
Question 1: What counts as “data”?
The important one, and the vaguest.
If a lab recovers 4% of your drive — a few thousand orphaned fragments with no filenames, none of which is the folder you actually wanted — has it recovered your data? Under a loose reading, yes. Invoice follows.
A meaningful guarantee is defined against what you asked for, not against whether any bytes came back.
Ask: if you recover files but not the ones I need, do I pay? And get the answer before you ship anything.
The practical version of this is a file listing. A lab that shows you what it found before you pay has removed the ambiguity entirely — you look at the list, you see whether your wedding photos are on it, and you decide. That’s the arrangement worth insisting on.
Question 2: Is the evaluation free, and is it really free?
Plenty of “no data, no fee” labs charge an evaluation or diagnostic fee that you pay regardless of outcome. Sometimes it’s disclosed clearly, sometimes it appears after the drive is already in their building.
Watch for it under other names: intake fee, assessment fee, bench fee, “engineering time.”
Ask: is there any charge at all if I decline the quote?
Question 3: What happens if I say no to the quote?
You send the drive, they evaluate, they quote you $1,900, and you decide it’s more than the data is worth.
Now what? At a good lab, they ship your drive back and that’s the end of it. Elsewhere you may find:
- Return shipping is on you. Reasonable, and worth knowing.
- A restocking or handling fee for the privilege of declining.
- The drive comes back disassembled, or in worse condition than it left, because “evaluation” involved opening it.
Ask: if I decline, what does it cost me and what condition does my drive come back in?
Question 4: Are parts billed separately?
Some labs quote the recovery and then bill donor drives, donor PCBs, or destination media on top. A quote that becomes 30% larger at the end isn’t a quote.
Ask: is this the total, including any parts and including the drive you put my data on?
Question 5: Who pays for shipping?
Usually you, both directions, and that’s normal for mail-in work. It’s also the one cost you eat even in the best case where nothing is recoverable.
It’s a real argument for using someone local if there is one — drop-off removes both legs plus the risk of your only copy of something riding in a truck.
Free evaluation. Firm quote before any work. No data, no charge.
How mine works, specifically
So you can hold me to the same questions:
Evaluation is free. No diagnostic fee, no intake fee, no bench fee. If you decline the quote, you’ve paid me nothing.
You see what I found before you pay. A file listing, so you can confirm the thing you actually care about is there. Not a percentage, not a vague “we got most of it.”
The quote is the total. Parts included. Destination drive included. If something changes mid-job — and on degrading drives it occasionally does — you hear about it and re-approve before I continue, not afterward on an invoice.
No data means no charge. If I can’t get what you needed, you pay nothing and the only thing you’re out is shipping.
You get your drive back either way. In the condition it arrived in, unless recovery required opening it and you approved that.
Full ranges are on the pricing page, and the reasoning behind them is in why data recovery costs what it does.
The one thing a guarantee can’t cover
Worth saying plainly: “no data, no fee” protects your wallet. It doesn’t protect your data.
A lab with a genuine guarantee still has an incentive to attempt aggressive recovery on a marginal drive, because a failed attempt costs them nothing but a successful one pays. That incentive isn’t sinister, but it’s real, and it’s why the more important question is often not “what happens if you fail” but “what will you try, and what does it risk?”
On a drive with one shot at it — a failing head, a degrading surface — the right answer is sometimes a careful imaging pass, and sometimes it’s a referral to a cleanroom rather than an attempt that makes things worse.
The bottom line
“No data, no fee” is close to meaningless on its own. What makes it real is a free evaluation, a file listing before payment, an all-in quote, and a clear answer about what happens when you decline. Ask those four things of any lab you’re considering. They take one email and they sort the field quickly.
Want to see the arrangement in practice? Start a case — evaluation costs nothing, you see what came back before you pay, and if it isn’t what you needed, you don’t.