Free 48-hour diagnostic. One fixed price agreed upon in writing prior to opening. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. The town of March lies at the centre of the Fens, and on the northern edge of March is located the Whitemoor rail depot, with food and agricultural processing across the surrounding area.
Approximately 40 minutes and approximately 27 miles separate us from March. Simply bring it by yourself or send it to us via the postal service.
Covering Chatteris, Whittlesey, Doddington and the wider Cambridgeshire area.
To get to us from March, take the A141 and go south for approximately 40 minutes; it's approximately 27 miles. Most people from March prefer to post their items instead of bringing them themselves, and regardless of how you get it to us there will be no charge for return postage.
March is located in the middle of the Fens, which are known for agricultural and food processing industries. Additionally, there is a long-standing rail engineering presence around the Whitemoor railway yard. The recovery work here is very much industrial in nature, and often physically rough: drives from machines, vehicles and flooded buildings. We have seen more water and contaminant damage per job coming from the Fenland towns than from anywhere else that we provide services to, and more media that has run continuously for 15 years simply because nobody was prompted to replace it.
March sits at the centre of the Fens, and industrial and agricultural activity surrounds it, including food and agricultural processing. The Whitemoor rail depot is located on the northern side of the town.
Drawn directly from what has been done, not from some sort of capabilities list.
Many of the drives we see from industrial and agricultural devices are in poor physical condition. These devices include packhouse and process-line controllers, weighbridge and depot machines, vehicle recorders and plant recorders. The frequency of contamination, plus the high likelihood of water entering into many of these items, makes us quote opening the drive on the bench as the likely route rather than the exception.
Before you do anything else. If the drive has been exposed to moisture, do not try to dry it out and do not power it on to see. Send it to us in this state if you have to: a wet drive which hasn't been powered up will be a much better prospect than a dry unit that was powered up prior to sending.
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 March 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 March. 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 March.
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.
Please obtain a quotation prior to sending your drive. To receive a quotation, contact us by telephone or use our web-based quotation request form. Once you have received your quotation, please come to Compass House, Vision Park, Cambridge CB24 9AD during Monday to Friday hours (9am to 5:30pm). No appointment is required. Our office location is approximately twenty-seven miles from March via the B1050 and A141, taking approximately forty minutes to travel. Alternatively post your drive (we provide free return postage either way); however, you should ensure that you insure your item when posting.
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 diagnostics are free, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Our office in Cambridge is approximately 27 miles away, as opposed to being at the far end of a courier chain. Get a quote, then drop it off yourself or insure it and ship it: both methods start out the same.