The 48-hour diagnosis is free; there is just one set price that will be written down and agreed upon before we open anything. And in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. St Ives is the easiest town on the list to get to without using a car, because the guided busway goes right past our front door from there.
Roughly eighteen minutes and fourteen miles separate St Ives from our bench. Either bring it yourself or send it by post.
Covering Needingworth, Houghton, Hemingford Grey and the wider Cambridgeshire area.
Fourteen miles west along the A14, or take the guided busway (end to end) if the road is not good. It takes about twenty minutes by car and about thirty minutes by bus. St Ives is the closest of the market towns to us.
St Ives is a market town that was turned into a Cambridge dormitory with the opening of the busway and has a limited and light business community. It has professional services, trade service providers, as well as a few distribution units located on the outskirts of the town. For us, these factors have produced a significant percentage of one-machine businesses. One-machine businesses, such as the sole practitioner who keeps their accounts, correspondence, and client files on one laptop with no server backing them up, are urgent jobs by definition, because there is no second copy anywhere in the organisation.
The guided busway route from St Ives runs right outside our building, which makes this the easiest town on the list to reach without having to rely on a car. Most of the commercial activity we experience is coming from the industrial land at Compass Point, and also along the Somersham road.
Drawn directly from what has been done, not from some sort of capabilities list.
Small-business single points of failure. We have accountants, surveyors, letting agents, and tradespeople that operate all of their business from one computer (as well as the normal household-type work generated from a town filled with commuters). Quick recovery typically results due to the fact that these businesses use modern media. Pressure will build on these businesses since they have no backup option at all.
Before you do anything else. If it is your only computer for running your business, stop working on it entirely. A laptop belonging to a sole trader (the owner of the business) who continues to work on it while someone determines what action will be taken regarding this issue is actively creating an overwrite on the data you are trying to recover.
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 St Ives 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 St Ives. 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 St Ives.
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.
First obtain a quotation via telephone or using our recovery services quotation request form. Then bring it to us at Compass House, Vision Park, Cambridge CB24 9AD, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm; no appointment is required. We are approximately 14 miles away along the A14. The trip would take approximately 18 minutes. Or post it to us insured; return shipping is free either way.
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.
There is no charge for the diagnosis. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Our Cambridge location is about fourteen miles away, much closer to you than the end of a courier chain. Get a quote first, then either hand-deliver it or post it to us insured. Both methods begin the same way.