We will provide you with a free 48-hour diagnostic. We agree upon a fixed price prior to any work. We do not charge for most jobs that fail. This service is available to the people in Cheshire and the local Cheshire area.
Most of north-east Cheshire is only a few miles from the bench — we are actually just over the Greater Manchester border into Manchester. Therefore, either post it up here, or come down yourself.
Chester, Crewe, Macclesfield, Warrington, Wilmslow and the rest of Cheshire.
Manchester is where we are based – Peter House on Oxford Street, a short walk from Oxford Road station and from Piccadilly Station. Bring your device into us anytime during working hours, Mon-Fri; 9am to 5:30pm.
Pharmaceutical research is carried out in Macclesfield, financial services is operated in Chester, distribution and energy is located in Warrington, whilst railway and automotive engineering takes place in Crewe. As such, our client base represents an interesting mix of data types: regulated laboratory data, financial service server data, enterprise virtual environments, and engineering design files. The nature of the work in Cheshire leans heavily towards being regulated — pharmaceutical, financial and energy sector clients where documented handling and processing within the UK only is a requirement as opposed to a preference.
These are drawn from the jobs that are sent to us, as opposed to being selected out of a capability list.
Cheshire is involved in pharmaceutical research in Macclesfield, financial services in Chester, distribution and energy in Warrington and railway/automotive engineering in Crewe. All of these areas have work that goes into recovery. In reality it is regulated laboratory data, financial services servers, enterprise virtual environments, engineering designs etc. that arrive on our bench for quoting and turnaround. These will be very different types of work compared with a typical market town or university city; also how we quote and our ability to turn around fast will depend heavily upon the type of job received.
Work sent to us from Cheshire has a bias towards regulated end users (pharmaceutical, financial & energy sectors), where documentation to ensure safe handling of client's materials and processing within the UK only are required as opposed to just preferred.
In addition to all the above mentioned 'regulated' type of work, we also receive 'household' type work from each area. For example, laptops which won't start any more, external hard drives full of photographs, camera cards which were inadvertently formatted. We can offer this service from £250 + VAT up to £300 + VAT. This is typically some of the fastest work we process. Business/array recovery from anywhere in Cheshire begins at £500 + VAT.
Because "send it in and we will be in contact" isn't really a solution.
Your device is booked in as soon as it arrives, and you're told it has landed. When there is evidence that your device was mechanically damaged, your device is inspected prior to ever turning it on. We identify firmware revisions, family, and head configurations first, as that is when recoverable data can become unrecoverable, by powering a damaged drive to determine what occurs.
Within about 48 hours you will receive a written response to four questions: what went wrong, are the platters or flash memory damaged, what is a realistic recovery percentage, and a fixed quote for the total cost. There are no costs associated with anything until you agree to that fixed quote, and once you do agree to that fixed quote, nothing changes.
The device will be imaged read-only once approved. Each time we try to reconstruct, it's against the same read-only copy. So none of our attempts can lessen what can be recovered. The files are opened in their respective applications as opposed to being counted. Any file(s) that cannot be accessed will be named. All recovered data is returned to Cheshire on new media; return postage/shipping is also provided at no cost.
Everyone loses when you waste time going to see an expert unnecessarily.
Phones and tablets. This is not something we take on; modern mobile devices have such sophisticated encryption schemes to protect your data that attempting to recover information via third parties is extremely difficult, so if images are what matter to you, realistically using iCloud, Google Photos or a backup is the most likely solution, as opposed to a lab.
Soldered Mac storage on a dead board. The flash is soldered onto T2 and Apple Silicon systems along with being encrypted by the security chip. Therefore, once that main board dies, there will be absolutely no one able to recover anything off that board – none of us, nor Apple, nor those who quote four figures for extracting at the board level.
Encryption without the key. BitLocker, FileVault and hardware encrypted drives are opened only through providing credentials. Before calling us check with your IT team; they may hold the escrowed keys — more often than you'd think.
Send the device in with an initial report of what has occurred to it. The diagnosis is at no charge and commits you to nothing, and the subsequent fee is written as a firm price prior to opening anything.
This is the only step that requires input from you and nothing else can happen until the device is on our bench. Package your item properly and include all the information we require about you and your item(s), then ship them to us. Then comes a no-cost diagnostic, followed by a written quote.
Posting it? Use a tracked and insured service. The value of what is on the drive far exceeds the cost of postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays from 9am to 5:30pm, and it still needs packing as described above for the journey.
Tell us about the item in question, tell us how it has been behaving lately, and let us know if there is anything you have done as far as troubleshooting goes so that our engineers may provide a realistic estimate of success and a probable cost range prior to sending your items off.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 0161 871 0788.
Manchester, Peter House, Oxford Street, M1 5AN. Mon-Fri, 9am to 5:30pm. Our location is in Manchester itself, on Oxford Street. Alternatively, post it insured – both methods have free return postage.
We can offer you the "band" that applies to you right now — our published prices begin at £250 + VAT for cards, and £300 + VAT for a single drive. Once we have finished the initial 48-hour no-charge diagnostic work, we will write to you with an accurate price quote which will not change thereafter.
Turn it off now and leave it off. Clicking means a head is unable to locate its servo data, and every subsequent power-up may potentially damage the platter surface. As such, how long it runs after the first noise is far more important to the result than anything we might do.
On a regular basis. For example, NDAs are always signed; you get one named contact from the beginning of each diagnostic project through to completion; invoices are sent instead of processing credit/debit card payments for established firms; and, as required by your insurance company or auditor, we document in writing exactly what happened when something went wrong.
From £250 + VAT for cards and USB media; from £300 + VAT for a single drive, laptop or Mac with removable storage; £550 + VAT flat rate for a Fusion Drive; and from £500 + VAT for RAID, NAS & servers — each quoted in writing after a complimentary 48-hour diagnostic.
Occasionally, when it's a logical fault on healthy hardware dropped in early; physical recovery cannot be compressed that far — handling priority will move you to the head of the queue, however you still cannot make a failing hard disk read at a faster speed.
You’ll receive an evaluation report free of charge. Most work has no fee unless we recover the data. Two decades of experience just over the county line. Come visit us in Manchester or send the drive fully insured.
We serve the north-east of Cheshire — including Macclesfield, Wilmslow, Poynton — from our unit at Oxford Street, M1 5AN which is just a few miles up the A523. Just drop off or send it by post to us. The initial diagnostic service costs you nothing.