Free 48-hour diagnostic, a fixed price agreed before any work, and no fix no fee on most jobs. Serving Warrington and the surrounding Cheshire area.
Roughly 40 minutes and 19 miles separate Warrington from our bench — drop it in yourself, or put it in the post.
Covering Widnes, Runcorn and Lymm and the wider Cheshire area.
Warrington is nineteen miles from us on the M62 and M6, about 30 minutes. Close enough for same-day drop-off, far enough that plenty of customers send devices by insured post instead.
Warrington runs on one of the busiest distribution and corporate hubs in the North West, with nuclear and energy sector employers at Birchwood alongside major logistics operations. What that means for us is a particular mix of work: corporate servers and virtual environments, distribution and warehouse systems, and engineering data from the energy sector. Warrington produces more enterprise-scale work than anywhere else in our coverage — virtual machines, multi-shelf arrays and environments with genuine compliance requirements attached.
Covering Widnes, Runcorn and Lymm 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. Warrington is built on one of the busiest distribution and corporate hubs in the North West, with nuclear and energy sector employers at Birchwood alongside major logistics operations — so the devices that arrive here are corporate servers and virtual environments, distribution and warehouse systems, and engineering data from the energy sector.
Warrington produces more enterprise-scale work than anywhere else in our coverage — virtual machines, multi-shelf arrays and environments with genuine compliance requirements attached.
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.
Written out, because “send it in and we’ll be in touch” is not much of an answer.
Your device is booked in the day it arrives and you are told it landed. Where the symptoms suggest mechanical damage it is examined before being powered at all — family, firmware revision and head configuration identified first, because powering a damaged drive to see what happens is how recoverable data stops being recoverable.
Within about 48 hours you get a written answer to four questions: what failed, whether the platters or flash are damaged, what proportion is realistically recoverable, and one fixed price. Nothing is chargeable until you have agreed that figure, and it does not move afterwards.
From approval, the device is imaged read-only and every reconstruction attempt runs against that copy, so nothing we try can reduce what is recoverable. Files are opened in their applications rather than counted, anything unreadable is named, and the recovered data goes back to Warrington on fresh media with return shipping included.
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.
Yes — Warrington and the surrounding area including Widnes, Runcorn and Lymm. We’re about nineteen miles away via the M62 and M6, roughly 30 minutes. Drop-off or insured post both start the same free 48-hour diagnostic.
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.
The diagnostic is normally back inside 48 hours. From approval a single drive usually completes in three to four working days; array and donor-part work takes longer and you get the timescale with the quote.
The drive alone where you can — cheaper to post, quicker to start, and any computer shop in Warrington will remove it in minutes. External units are the exception and should come complete with their enclosure.
You pay nothing on most jobs. The diagnostic is free and the majority of our work is no fix, no fee — forensic examination, CCTV and data destruction are the exceptions, and we say so before you commit.
Yes. Data stays in the UK, work is carried out in-house rather than subcontracted, NDAs are signed as standard for business work, and working copies are destroyed after a retention period you set.
The diagnostic costs nothing, most jobs carry no fee unless the data comes back, and the bench is 19 miles away rather than at the end of a courier chain. Walk it in, or send it insured — both start the same way.