Free 48-hour diagnostic, one fixed price agreed in writing before anything is opened, and no fix no fee on most jobs. Positioned on the Thames crossing with the distribution and retail economy that creates, including the logistics parks and the haulage moving through them.
Roughly 90 minutes and 68 miles separate Dartford from our bench — drop it in yourself, or put it in the post.
Covering Swanscombe, Greenhithe, Bexley and the wider Kent area.
Sixty-eight miles south, around ninety minutes via the M25. Dartford work almost always comes by insured post, which we return free.
Dartford sits on the Thames crossing with the distribution and retail economy that position creates — Bluewater, the logistics parks, and the haulage that moves through both. The work is retail and transport systems, and the urgency is commercial: an EPOS estate or a stock system that cannot see its inventory costs money continuously rather than on a deadline. Distance means we handle these by post, and turnaround is quoted from receipt rather than from the call.
Positioned on the Thames crossing with the distribution and retail economy that creates, including the logistics parks and the haulage moving through them.
Drawn from the work rather than from a capability list.
Retail and transport. EPOS estates and stock systems, haulage and telematics records, warehouse databases. Handled by insured post from this distance, with the diagnostic starting the day the media arrives.
Before you do anything else. On an EPOS estate, capture which terminals are affected before anything is reimaged. It narrows the job considerably.
Alongside that there is the ordinary run of household work that every area produces: laptops that stopped starting, external drives full of photographs, camera cards formatted by mistake. Those are from £250 to £300 +VAT and are frequently the quickest jobs we handle. Business and array work from Dartford and across Cambridgeshire starts from £500 +VAT.
The same whether you walk it in or send it by courier.
Compass House, Vision Park, Cambridge CB24 9AD, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm — or insured post from Dartford. Send the bare drive rather than the whole machine where you can.
The fault is classified — mechanical, electronic, firmware or logical — because that decides the route, the price and the realistic odds.
One figure, agreed before anything is touched, and it does not move afterwards. If software would do it, or nothing can be recovered, you hear that instead.
Imaged read-only, rebuilt from the copy, verified by opening files rather than counting them, and returned on fresh media with free shipping back to Dartford.
You are at the far end of what we cover, so a wasted postal round trip costs you more than most. Check these first.
The drive still mounts and reads. Copy the files off before you pack it. A readable disk does not need a laboratory, and it certainly does not need one eighty miles away.
A closer laboratory would suit you better. If speed matters more than anything, a Kent lab may genuinely serve you better than we can. We will say so rather than talk you out of it.
The files are in a backup you forgot about. Cloud version history, Previous Versions, Time Machine, a copy sent to somebody. A meaningful share of enquiries end here, for nothing.
Your BitLocker key exists after all. On a work machine it is almost certainly held centrally by IT. Ask before assuming it is gone.
Send the device over with a short account of what happened to it. The diagnostic costs nothing and commits you to nothing, and the figure that follows is fixed in writing before anything is opened.
Nothing can begin until the device is on the bench, which makes this the only step that needs anything from you. Pack it properly, put your details in with it, and send it over. What follows is a free diagnostic and a written figure, in that order.
Posting it? Use something tracked and insured — whatever is on the drive is worth considerably more than the postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm, and it still wants packing as above for the journey.
Tell us what the device is, what it is doing, and anything already tried — an engineer will come back with a realistic view of the odds and a price band, before you commit to posting anything.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 01223 655015.
Compass House, Vision Park, Cambridge CB24 9AD, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm. We’re about sixty-eight miles away via the M11 and M25, roughly 90 minutes. Or post it insured — return shipping is free either way.
We can give you the band immediately — the published prices start at £250 plus VAT for cards and £300 for a single drive. The exact figure is fixed in writing after the free 48-hour diagnostic, and it does not move afterwards.
Switch it off and leave it off. Clicking means the heads cannot find their servo data, and every further power-on risks scoring the surface. How long it ran after the first noise affects the result more than anything we do.
Regularly. NDAs signed as standard, one named contact from diagnostic to delivery, invoicing rather than card payment for established firms, and a written account of what failed for insurers or auditors.
From £250 plus VAT for cards and USB media, from £300 plus VAT for a single drive, laptop or Mac with removable storage, £550 plus VAT flat for a Fusion Drive, and from £500 plus VAT for RAID, NAS and servers — each quoted in writing after a free 48-hour diagnostic.
Occasionally, on a logical fault with healthy hardware dropped in early. Physical recoveries cannot be compressed that far — priority handling moves you to the front of the queue but cannot make a failing drive read faster.
The diagnostic costs nothing, most jobs carry no fee unless the data comes back, and the bench is 11 miles away rather than at the end of a courier chain. Walk it in, or send it insured — both start the same way.