Free 48-hour diagnostic and one fixed price agreed in writing before anything is opened; in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Three distinct economies in one county: in the south, the technology and research cluster; along the A14, light manufacturing and logistics; to the north, fenland agriculture and food processing.
We are located at Vision Park on the northern edge of Cambridge at the junction with the A14. Nowhere else in the county is more than an hour away.
Covering Cambridge, Ely, Huntingdon and the rest of the county.
We are located at Vision Park on the northern edge of Cambridge at the junction with the A14. Nowhere else in the county is more than an hour away.
Cambridgeshire has a total of three types of economy that produce three different kinds of work for us. The southern part of Cambridgeshire, as it relates to our work, focuses on research and technology, and we see this area providing single-copy data from academia and start-up companies, instrument PCs and arrays found at science parks. The central and western parts of Cambridgeshire provide logistics and light manufacturing work along the A14 corridor. This type of work provides us with business array work and what we consider true emergency situations. The northern portion of Cambridgeshire is focused on fenland agriculture and food processing, which generates industrial media in poor physical condition. One county with three quite distinct benches.
Three different economic systems all in the same county: the research and technology cluster located in the southern part of the county, the logistics and light manufacturing operations along the A14 corridor, and fenland agriculture and food processing in the northern parts of the county.
Drawn directly from what has been done, not from some sort of capabilities list.
From doctoral research being stored on a single USB stick to RAID 6 sets used in A14 distribution warehouses and packhouse control systems from fenland-based businesses. The three distinct economies of Cambridgeshire produce three distinctly different job profiles, and fenland-based work is consistently the most physically damaged.
Before you do anything else. What to do first will depend upon what went wrong, but regardless of the failure type, the number one rule to follow is to stop using it. We can then work with everything else.
In addition to business-related failures and damage, we also perform standard recovery work for consumer or household problems. Every region generates its own share of “household” jobs. These include laptops that won't boot up, external hard drives full of pictures, and cameras whose memory cards were formatted by mistake. Prices range from £250 to £300 +VAT and these are frequently our fastest jobs. Business and array work from across Cambridgeshire starts from £500 +VAT.
It makes no difference if you hand-deliver the item or send it via courier.
First get a quote either by using our form or by phoning us. We will then ask you to deliver your drive to Compass House, Vision Park, Cambridge CB24 9AD, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm, without needing an appointment. Alternatively you may post the drive insured from Cambridgeshire. Only send the drive, as we don't accept complete laptops, PCs or Macs.
Whether the fault is classified as mechanical, electronic, firmware or logical will determine the route for repair, cost and real probability of success.
There is one number agreed prior to opening up the device. The number never changes after that. Instead, if there is software available to accomplish this task, or if nothing can be salvaged, then you will hear this.
Imaged read-only, rebuilt using the image, checked by accessing files rather than counting them, and copied to new media and delivered via free shipping back to Cambridgeshire.
This will cost us the job. This is still the correct choice. We get every one of these via telephone most weeks.
The drive still mounts and reads. You should back up your files from that drive yourself, the critical information first, and then cease use of the drive entirely. The only thing that a laboratory brings to a working drive is its price tag.
The files are in a backup you forgot about. Some examples include: cloud version history; Time Machine; Previous Versions; a copy sent via email to someone else. A meaningful share of our enquiries resolve to a forgotten backup in 5 minutes, for nothing.
A recent deletion from a healthy drive. If you install reputable read-only software to a different drive, it will often do the job at a small percentage of what we normally charge.
Your BitLocker key exists after all. At work, your IT department has almost certainly stored your BitLocker encryption keys within Azure AD or Microsoft Intune. One question will answer more of these than anything we can do technically.
Get a quote first. This can be done by phone or with our online form. Send the device to us with a brief account of what happened to it. The diagnostic is cost-free and obliges you to nothing. The figure that follows will then be fixed in writing before anything is opened.
Once you have a quote, nothing else can be done until the device is on the workbench. As such, this is the only step that needs anything from you. Pack it properly, add your details and post/deliver it with no appointment required. All that follows is a free diagnostic and a written quotation price, in that order.
Using postal services? Please use a method that has tracking and insurance; the value of what is on the drive far outweighs the cost of postage. If bringing in personally, please bring this item Monday to Friday, from 9am until 5:30pm without requiring an appointment, but again, please pack items carefully for transport.
Please provide information about the unit including what it is doing and any troubleshooting performed prior to contacting us. An engineer will then contact you to outline their professional assessment of the prospects along with a price range prior to you sending anything.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 01223 655015.
Get a price first, via phone or using the form, and then take your drive to Compass House, Vision Park, Cambridge CB24 9AD from Monday to Friday between 9am and 5:30pm. There are no appointments required. We also offer free return postage whether you choose to send your drive by post (insured) or to drop it off locally.
We will provide the price band immediately: the listed costs begin at £250 plus VAT for card data and £300 for a single drive. The exact cost is fixed in writing after the initial 48-hour complimentary diagnostic, and this cost will not change.
Switch it off immediately and leave it off. Clicking means the heads cannot find their servo data, and every time you turn it back on again there is an increased risk of damaging the hard disk drive surfaces. The length of time it was running after its first audible click will have a greater effect on recovery success than anything else we can do.
We do, regularly. We use NDAs by default, one named point of contact from diagnostic through to delivery, invoice established firms instead of using credit/debit cards, and provide a detailed report describing what failed (for audit and insurance purposes).
Our pricing starts at £250 plus VAT for cards and USB drives, then from £300 plus VAT for a single drive, or for laptops and Macs equipped with removable storage, with £550 plus VAT being our flat price for a Fusion Drive. Our prices for RAID, NAS and server systems start from £500 plus VAT; each quote is made in writing after we complete your complimentary 48-hour diagnostic.
It's rare, but possible with a logical error on good hardware dropped off early. We cannot compress a physical recovery that far: although priority treatment puts you ahead of everyone else in line, it does nothing to speed up how quickly your bad drive reads.
The diagnostic is free, and in the majority of situations you only pay if we recover your data. Our laboratory located in Cambridge can be reached by car, which allows you to avoid having to use courier services to get your item(s) to us. Get a quotation and then either bring your item(s) into us or post them to us using postal insurance. Both ways will begin in the same manner.