Free 48-hour diagnostic, a fixed price agreed before any work, and no fix no fee on most jobs. Serving Preston and the surrounding Lancashire area.
Roughly 40 minutes and 31 miles separate Preston from our bench — drop it in yourself, or put it in the post.
Covering Leyland, Bamber Bridge and Fulwood and the wider Lancashire area.
Preston is thirty-one miles from us on the M61 and M6, about 49 minutes. Close enough for same-day drop-off, far enough that plenty of customers send devices by insured post instead.
Preston runs on the administrative centre for Lancashire, with a large university, county council operations, aerospace at Samlesbury and Warton, and substantial professional services. What that means for us is a particular mix of work: university research data, council and public sector machines, engineering drawings from the aerospace supply chain, and practice servers. Preston generates more enquiries than anywhere else outside Manchester itself. Aerospace and public sector work both bring confidentiality requirements, and NDAs are signed as standard on both.
Covering Leyland, Bamber Bridge and Fulwood and the surrounding area.
Every town sends us a slightly different set of problems, because the economy decides what people are storing and on what. Preston is built on the administrative centre for Lancashire, with a large university, county council operations, aerospace at Samlesbury and Warton, and substantial professional services — so the devices that arrive here are university research data, council and public sector machines, engineering drawings from the aerospace supply chain, and practice servers.
Preston generates more enquiries than anywhere else outside Manchester itself. Aerospace and public sector work both bring confidentiality requirements, and NDAs are signed as standard on both.
That matters for two practical reasons. It tells us what to expect before a device arrives, which shortens the diagnostic. And it means the questions we ask on the phone are the ones relevant to your situation rather than a script — a production line PC and a family laptop are not the same conversation, even when the drive inside them is identical.
The same whether you walk it in or send it by courier.
Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5AN, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm — or insured post from Preston. 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 Preston.
Because a wasted trip helps nobody.
Phones and tablets. Not something we take on. Modern handsets are encrypted in a way that makes third-party recovery impractical, and if photographs are what matter the realistic route is iCloud, Google Photos or a backup rather than a laboratory.
Soldered Mac storage on a dead board. On T2 and Apple Silicon machines the flash is soldered and encrypted by the security chip. Once that board fails nobody recovers it — not us, not Apple, not anyone quoting four figures for board-level extraction.
Encryption without the key. BitLocker, FileVault and hardware-encrypted drives open with the credentials and by no other route. Worth checking with your IT department first — the key is escrowed far more often than people expect.
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 0161 871 0788.
Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5AN, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm. We’re about thirty-one miles away via the M61 and M6, roughly 49 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 31 miles away rather than at the end of a courier chain. Walk it in, or send it insured — both start the same way.