Free 48-hour diagnostic, one fixed price agreed in writing before anything is opened, and no fix no fee on most jobs. Kent's county town, carrying the administrative and professional load that goes with it — courts, county services, legal and land practices — alongside agriculture and food production across the weald.
Roughly 110 minutes and 85 miles separate Maidstone from our bench — drop it in yourself, or put it in the post.
Covering Aylesford, Bearsted, Larkfield and the wider Kent area.
Eighty-five miles south via the M25 and M20. Insured post both ways, return shipping at our cost.
Maidstone is Kent's county town and carries the administrative and professional load that goes with it — courts, county services, legal and land practices — alongside agriculture and food production across the surrounding weald. The work is records-based: case and land files, authority archives, and the traceability data that food and drink production requires. Retention obligations mean much of it is old, and old media is why the job exists.
Kent's county town, carrying the administrative and professional load that goes with it — courts, county services, legal and land practices — alongside agriculture and food production across the weald.
Drawn from the work rather than from a capability list.
Administrative and agricultural records. Legal and land files, county service archives, food and drink traceability data. Long retention periods mean recovery from genuinely aged media — tape, optical and pre-SATA drives — is a routine part of the work here.
Before you do anything else. On archive media, do not attempt to read it repeatedly on consumer hardware. Old tape and optical media get one or two good attempts.
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 Maidstone 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 Maidstone. 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 Maidstone.
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 eighty-five miles away via the M11, M25 and M20, roughly 110 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.