Published prices. All work in-house in Austin. Five published pricing tiers: HDD $100–$2,000 (helium-sealed 8TB+ drives quoted on a separate tier), SSD $200–$1,500, NVMe $200–$2,500. No diagnostic fees. No sales team between you & the technician. Every number above was published before you got here.
| Rossmann Repair Group | DriveSavers / Ontrack | SecureData / SalvageData | Geek Squad | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published Pricing | 5 tiers per device, on the website | No. Quote after evaluation | No. Call for quote | No |
| HDD Recovery | $100–$2,000 | Not published; quote after evaluation | Low phone quote, escalates after shipping (documented) | Not published (outsourced) |
| SSD Recovery | SATA $200–$1,500; NVMe $200–$2,500 | Wide ranges; not published | Not published | Not published |
| iPhone Recovery | $500–$750 | Not published; quote after evaluation | $1,760 documented | N/A |
| Diagnostic Fee | Free | Free eval, but 'top third' pricing rule | 'Free' but return fees documented | Varies |
| No-Fix-No-Fee | Yes. Customer defines success | Conditional | Claimed | Conditional |
| Talk to Technician | Yes, directly | Sales team / account manager | Call center | Counter staff |
| Recovery Location | 1 lab, Austin TX, all in-house | Central lab(s) | Multiple listed locations (virtual offices documented) | Outsourced to undisclosed partners |
| Equipment Disclosed | PC-3000, DeepSpar, 0.02µm ULPA bench | Toolset not published | Toolset not published | Toolset not published |
| Google Reviews | 4.9 stars, 1,837+ reviews | Questioned (reporting & review disputes documented) | Present | Mixed |
| Filmed Recoveries | YouTube channel with filmed recoveries | No | No | No |
| Rush Fee | +$100 | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
Competitor prices from documented customer quotes, BBB complaints, & Reddit r/datarecovery threads. Rossmann prices from published pricing page. Full source documentation: bait-and-switch pricing.
A lab that publishes no rate card has not told you what its number covers, so nobody outside that lab can break it down honestly. What we can break down is ours.
Our Google Ads spend: $0. Referral commissions: $0. Affiliate kickbacks: $0. The technician who diagnoses your drive in Austin is the same person who answers the phone when you call (512) 212-9111. Your invoice covers engineering time & donor parts.
A head swap costs $1,200–$1,500 here, and that number was on this site before you read it. It covers donor matching, bench time, & the imaging pass afterward.
We'll name ours: PC-3000 Portable III, PC-3000 Express, PC-3000 SSD, DeepSpar Disk Imager, & a 0.02 micron ULPA-filtered clean bench. ACELab manufactures the PC-3000 platform. If a lab will not tell you what is on its bench, you have nothing to compare against ours.
We've verified our clean bench filtration on camera. YouTube video m1OdI7A9_ek shows a particle counter reading real-time particle counts inside the work zone. Our ULPA laminar flow bench is where open-drive head swaps happen.
DriveSavers & Ontrack are real labs with real engineers. They've recovered data from catastrophic failures. The question isn't capability. It's that neither publishes a rate card, so you cannot weigh their number against ours until your drive is already in their building. Ours is $1,200–$1,500 for a head swap, and our DriveSavers analysis collects the quotes customers have documented.
That independent lab does not have to be this one. This page argues for us, so it is worth saying that we publish a list of competitors we would rather you use than overpay elsewhere, and we take nothing for sending you there. If one of them is closer to you or better suited to your device, use them. We would rather lose the job to an honest lab than have you decide the whole industry is a racket.
One-lab routing means your drive ships to 2410 San Antonio Street in Austin, gets evaluated in-house, & stays with one bench workflow from intake through imaging. The technician who evaluates it is the technician who recovers it. One chain of custody. One set of equipment. No handoffs to third-party labs.
Some companies list dozens of locations. Google Local Guide investigations have documented data recovery listings at a UPS Store with a mailbox number formatted as a suite (SalvageData, Edwardsville, IL), a 471 sq ft residential condo in Miami Beach (Data Recovery 47, a SalvageData subsidiary), the UT Austin campus computer store (SecureData), & an unrelated computer repair shop at 7801 N Lamar Blvd in Austin (SalvageData). Full documentation on our fake data recovery locations page.
One-lab routing means your drive goes to 2410 San Antonio Street in Austin, gets evaluated in-house, & stays with one bench workflow from intake through imaging. There is no storefront intake middleman between the customer & the Austin bench, whether the job is hard drive data recovery or SSD data recovery.
Geek Squad accepts drives at Best Buy counters & ships them to undisclosed third-party partner labs. The person behind the counter doesn't perform data recovery.
Your drive enters a fulfillment pipeline you can't see. Our Geek Squad comparison covers this process in detail.
These cases are documented in BBB complaints & Reddit r/datarecovery threads. When a company drops its price by 50-90% after a customer declines, the initial quote didn't reflect the cost of the work. Full case documentation on our bait-and-switch pricing page.
| Company | Initial Quote | Outcome | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| DriveSavers | $3,900 (SSD) | Dropped to $1,800 after decline (53%) | Reddit, 2025 |
| DriveSavers | $2,600 (iPhone) | iPad Rehab recovered for $810 | Reddit, 2024 |
| DriveSavers | ~$2,700 (HDD) | Charged full price; zero target docs recovered | BBB, 2024 |
| SalvageData | $12,000+ (2 laptops) | Dropped to $1,260 after decline (90%) | BBB, Jan 2026 |
| SecureData | $1,760 (iPhone) | Offered $900 to remove negative review | Reddit, 2024 |
| SecureData | $2,000 (phone: $395-$1,000) | Dropped to $1,500 + $40 return fee | Reddit, 2023 |
| PITS Global | $2,000 (minor's HDD) | $1,139.40 cancellation fee (60%); drive held | BBB, 2025 |
Ship us your drive or drop it off in Austin. Free diagnosis. Firm quote based on failure type, not data value. HDD recovery: $100–$2,000. No data, no fee.
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5 tiers per device: HDD $100–$2,000, SSD $200–$1,500
