Free 48-hour diagnostic. One fixed price, agreed in writing before anything is opened. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. A prosperous market town located on the edge of the M11 corridor with Chesterford Research Park to the north and Stansted a short run away via the motorway.
Approximately 30 minutes (and about eighteen miles) separates Saffron Walden and our workshop, so you can either drop your drive off yourself or send it in by post.
Covering Great Chesterford, Newport, Thaxted and the wider Essex area.
Approximately eighteen miles south of us down the M11, about thirty minutes. The drive is relatively straightforward and is one of our easier routes. It is also a common drop-off on the way to Stansted.
With its high levels of affluence, small size, and professional orientation, Saffron Walden has a commuter-oriented population and a business base of consultancies, practices, and one-person firms operating from their homes. Thus, while the recovery work from here is residential in nature, it is commercially significant. For example, while a consultant's laptop represents the 'practice', there is usually no IT support for it. In addition, we are seeing a continuous flow of undeniably long-standing family material from here: scanned photographs and documents on media from the 2000s that have been stored in drawers and which cannot now be read.
An affluent market town located near to the M11 corridor with Chesterford Research Park to the north and Stansted just a short run down the motorway.
Drawn directly from what has been done, not from some sort of capabilities list.
Professional practices operated from home-based locations, and personal archives. Laptops used by consultants and practitioners without backup support available, and family media aged since the 2000s: early external hard disk drives, optical discs and memory cards, all of which have suffered degradation through storage rather than failure due to usage.
Before you do anything else. Old family media: do not continually try to mount it again. The process of repeatedly mounting an older family media item (i.e., a “bad” disc or memory card) can make partially usable items unusable.
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 Saffron Walden 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 Saffron Walden. 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 Saffron Walden.
We lose the job, but this is our correct response. It's better for you to know this now instead of when there is a bill due.
The drive still mounts and reads. Transfer your files off the device yourself, the most important ones first, then don't use it. We add nothing to a device you can still access.
The material is held elsewhere for compliance. Regulated and legal work is often stored on another server or store that was never asked about: compliance systems, practice management platforms, third-party stores. It's worth one phone call prior to assuming that it has been lost.
A recent deletion from a healthy drive. Reputable read-only programs installed on a different drive will often accomplish this at a fraction of what we would quote.
The backup did run after all. A failed backup notice does not always mean that a backup failed. Examine the physical media prior to writing it off.
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.
First obtain a quote, either over the phone or through the form. Then bring it to Compass House, located at Vision Park, Cambridge CB24 9AD, Monday to Friday from 9am to 5:30pm. No appointment is necessary. Compass House is approximately eighteen miles away via the M11 (approximately thirty minutes). Alternatively you may post it insured, and return shipping will be free in either case.
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.
Diagnostics are free, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data; our office is located in Cambridge (about 18 miles away), not at the end of a courier chain. Obtain a quote, then bring it to us for walk-in service or send it insured. Both start the same way.