We offer a free 48-hour diagnostic, agree a fixed price with you beforehand for any work done, and we won't charge anything for most jobs if your device doesn't recover. We serve both Warrington and the rest of the Cheshire region.
It will take roughly 30 minutes and be approximately 19 miles to get from Warrington to our workshop — you can either drop it off yourself or send it through the post.
In addition to Warrington, we also cover Widnes, Runcorn and Lymm as well as the remainder of the Cheshire region.
Warrington is 19 miles away from us via the M62 and M6, which would take around 30 minutes. This distance allows you to deliver your device to us today, but is still far enough for many of our clients to prefer sending their device(s) to us via insured post.
Warrington has one of the most heavily used distribution and corporate centres in the North West. There are nuclear and energy sector employers based at Birchwood in addition to major logistics operations. This creates a unique combination of types of work in terms of corporate servers & virtual environments, distribution & warehouse systems, and engineering data from the energy sector. We see more enterprise-scale work in Warrington than anywhere else within our geographic scope — virtual machines, multi-shelf arrays and environments with genuine compliance requirements attached.
We service the areas of Widnes, Runcorn and Lymm and their surrounding communities.
Each town provides us with a slightly unique collection of problems due to the economic factors that determine what people are storing and on what. The primary reason we receive corporate servers and virtual environments, distribution and warehouse systems, and engineering data from the energy sector is because Warrington is located in one of the most active distribution and corporate centres in the North West. Nuclear and energy sector employers are based at Birchwood, alongside major logistics operations.
Warrington generates more enterprise-scale work than anywhere else within our geographic scope — virtual machines, multi-shelf arrays and environments with genuine compliance requirements attached.
There are two important functional reasons why. It helps tell us what to expect once an item has arrived at our location and allows us to shorten the diagnostic time. And when we call you to determine how to proceed with recovering your drive, the questions we ask are related to your situation versus reading from a script — a production line computer and a family laptop, although they have the same exact hard drive installed, are not going to be similar conversations.
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.
Once approved, the device is imaged read-only and only the image is used when attempting all data rebuilds. Thus, none of what we do will be able to decrease what can still be recovered. Recovered files are opened in their applications instead of being listed as file counts; unreadable items will be named and all recovered data will be shipped back to Warrington on new media, with shipping costs included.
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.
Yes — Warrington and surrounding areas such as Widnes, Runcorn and Lymm. We're approximately 19 miles away using the M62 & M6, which would take around 30 minutes. Both drop-off and insured post begin the free 48-hour diagnostic process.
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.
A normal 48-hour turnaround is expected for the diagnostic. A single drive generally takes 3–4 working days from approval to completion. Longer lead-times are anticipated for array & donor part projects, and you receive the estimated timeline with your quote.
Please send just the hard drive or SSD – we cannot accept full laptop/desktop computers. Any computer shop in Warrington will remove the hard drive/SSD within minutes. The only exceptions are external units – these should be sent complete with the casing unit.
In most cases you pay nothing. We provide a complimentary 48-hour diagnostic, and in the event that we cannot recover data from your device — again in most cases — there is no additional charge — except for forensic examination, CCTV & data destruction which are explicitly identified when providing an estimate.
Yes. Your data will remain here within the UK, your work will never be outsourced, our non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are signed as standard for all commercial work, and working copies of your files are kept only for the retention period you decide, then destroyed.
The diagnostic process costs nothing; most jobs will carry no fee unless your data can be recovered; our Manchester office is approximately 19 miles away, not at the far end of a courier chain. Send it insured or bring it in yourself – either way begins the same.