A few questions about what your drive is doing, and roughly a minute. What comes back is the fault class it points to, what to stop doing immediately, and which of our published price bands you are likely in. No phone call, no sign-up, and nothing reaches us unless you choose to send the device.
Built around the faults that actually come through this door. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is submitted, stored or seen by us unless you choose to get in touch afterwards.
Enough to decide your next move without speaking to anybody, including us.
Not a lookup table. What it asks next depends on what you have already told it.
Every diagnostic begins in the same sequence, whether an engineer is asking or this tool is: what the device is, what it is doing, and what has already been tried on it. Those three answers eliminate more possibilities than any amount of detail about capacity, age or make.
So the path branches. Say the drive is making a noise and it asks what kind, because a rhythmic click and a continuous scrape indicate different things and carry different urgency. Say it is silent and it goes somewhere else entirely, because a drive with no spin is usually electronics rather than mechanics — and unlike the first case, nothing is deteriorating while you decide.
What it cannot do is see the device. A drive reporting the wrong capacity and a drive with a failing head can present identically in a description, so the output is a probable classification rather than a confirmation. The free 48-hour diagnostic is what settles it.
All excluding VAT, and identical to the figures on every other page of this site.
£250 memory cards and USB sticks · £300 single drives, SSDs, laptops, PCs, externals and Macs with removable storage · £550 flat Fusion Drive Macs · from £500 RAID, NAS, servers and databases · £800 flat BitLocker and CCTV · from £800 virtual machines and forensics · from £1,250 enterprise SAN.
The tool tells you which band applies. It does not quote, because a quote requires seeing the device — and a firm that gives you a firm number from a web form is guessing at yours.
Stated plainly, because a tool that oversold itself would be worse than not having one.
It is reliable at placing a described symptom in the right fault class, at telling you whether the situation is getting worse while you decide, and at identifying the cases that are closed whoever you approach — encryption without the key, soldered Apple storage on a dead board, TRIMmed SSD deletions.
It cannot tell you anything that requires the device on a bench: whether the platters carry scoring, how far bad sectors have spread, whether a particular controller will respond, or how much of an array is still readable. Those are the questions that determine the actual outcome, and none of them can be answered from a description.
Treat the output as a well-informed starting point rather than a verdict. It is the same thing you would get from a thorough phone call, which is exactly what it was built to replace at two in the morning.
They apply to every device and every fault this tool can identify.
Clicking, grinding or scraping means components are moving in ways they should not, and nothing this tool reports alters it. The interval between the first unfamiliar sound and the power being switched off affects the outcome more than everything that happens afterwards.
No recovery software installed onto it, no test files written back, and no accepting Windows’ offer to format, initialise or repair. Install to a different drive, recover to a third, or leave the device alone completely.
Yes — wholly free, no sign-up, no card details. It all runs in your browser, so contact only happens if you choose it. The in-house diagnostic on the device itself is free too.
It reads an accurate ballpark from your device type, which fits the great majority of recoveries. The odd case — a physically damaged card needing chip-level work, or an involved RAID rebuild — can land higher. Your exact price is always confirmed in writing after the free diagnostic, ahead of any work.
For most jobs, no recovered data means no recovery fee. Your written quote sets out exactly what applies to your case, so nothing surprises you.
Package your media and either bring it to our Vision Park point, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm, or post it fully insured. Print the shipping slip above, add your details, and slip it into the parcel with your name, phone, email and address so we can log it in.
Power it down straight away and keep it off. That clicking or grinding almost always points to a physical head or motor fault, and each powered minute risks more harm. Use the diagnostic above for guidance suited to you, or ring 01223 655015 without delay.
Yes. Everything's handled in-house and every recovery kept confidential. Ask, and we'll happily put an NDA in place for commercial or sensitive work.
Tell us what's gone and we'll respond, usually inside 30 minutes during the day.
We'll reply shortly. Anything urgent, call 01223 655015.
Drop your device in or post it with the shipping slip, and after a free diagnostic we'll put your exact quote in writing. Prefer to talk first? We're just a phone call away.