Free 48-hour diagnostic; fixed price agreed in writing before anything is opened, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. The town is four miles away from both the A1(M) and the A14, as a result of which a lot of distribution ended up here.
Approximately 22 minutes and 15 miles separate our bench and Huntingdon: you can either drop it off at our location, or send it by post.
Covering Godmanchester, St Neots, Brampton and the wider Cambridgeshire area.
Twenty-two minutes and fifteen miles west on the A14. After the dual carriageway was upgraded, this became one of the easier routes for delivery to us.
There are both logistics and light manufacturing operations in Huntingdon that most people passing on the A14 never see, as well as RAF Wyton and the contractors that operate around it. So, the bulk of the work from Huntingdon is primarily business with an emphasis on arrays: warehouse management servers, transport and fleet systems and the RAID sets that support them. It also generates more emergency-type jobs than anywhere else in the county. If a company involved in the distribution of goods cannot see what inventory they have, they lose money by the hour, not by the day.
The town is 4 miles away from both the A1(M) and the A14, which is why so much distribution work has been attracted to it. Most of the commercial/industrial work we receive from here comes from St Peter's Industrial Park and the estates toward Godmanchester, while RAF Wyton and the contractors based there are behind them.
Drawn directly from what has been done, not from some sort of capabilities list.
The lab mostly receives business array work from here, such as RAID 5 and 6 arrays pertaining to warehouse and transport operations, fleet management and inventory control systems, and the occasional virtual machine host. We get emergency requests for this work far more often than for domestic jobs, and these types of requests are why an ongoing supply of enterprise-level SAS spares is held in stock.
Before you do anything else. On warehousing/transportation systems, take down the array cleanly. Do not allow any degraded RAIDs to continue operating. Every hour a degraded RAID runs will be another hour that it could lose another disk.
In addition to that, we also receive many examples of standard day-to-day household computer problems, which occur within every community, such as laptops that won’t start again, external drives containing your family photos, and memory cards formatted by mistake on one of your cameras. The cost for these items ranges from £250 to £300 plus VAT, and they are often amongst the fastest services we provide. Business and array work from Huntingdon and throughout Cambridgeshire begins at £500 plus 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 Huntingdon. 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 Huntingdon.
This costs us the job. However, it is still the correct answer. You'd be better served hearing it sooner.
The drive still mounts and reads. Make copies of the most important files first and copy them off yourself. Once you've copied everything you need to, stop using it. A lab doesn't add value to something you can already read.
It is on a University or institutional system. Frequently departmental and college systems maintain backups through central servers without telling users. Sending one email to whoever manages the system will resolve more of these issues than what we could accomplish technically.
A recent deletion from a healthy drive. Reputable read-only applications, available at a fraction of what we charge, will often recover the deleted data when run from a different drive. We'll tell you which tools are worth trying.
Your BitLocker key exists after all. On a work or institutional computer, this is almost certainly stored centrally within Microsoft's Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) or Microsoft Intune. So ask before assuming that it has been lost.
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 quote first, by phone or with the form, then bring it to Compass House, Vision Park, Cambridge CB24 9AD (Monday to Friday, 9am–5:30pm), and we don't need you to book in advance. Our office is about fifteen miles away via the A14 and should take about 22 minutes. Or post it insured: whatever you choose to do, postage of your drive back to you will be free.
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 costs nothing. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Additionally, our Cambridge office is about fifteen miles away, rather than at the end of some courier chain. Get a quote, then walk it in or send it insured: both start the same way.