We provide a free 48-hour diagnostic check, a fixed price quote prior to starting any work and no charge for most jobs if we are unable to recover your data. We serve all areas of Wigan as well as the Greater Manchester area.
The distance from Wigan to our workshop is approximately 40 minutes and 17 miles so you can either drop it in yourself or send it through the post with insurance.
In addition to Wigan we also cover Leigh, Ashton-in-Makerfield and Standish and other areas within the Greater Manchester region.
Wigan is 17 miles from us along the A577 and M6, which will take approximately 40 minutes. This makes it easy for customers who live locally to have their device dropped off at our premises today. However due to the distance many customers prefer to send their damaged storage media by insured post.
Wigan's economy is made up of distribution centres strung along the M6, food production, engineering and a large public sector employer base. This gives us a specific mix of work – warehouse and stock-control servers, production line PCs and CCTV from the distribution sites. As the M6 corridor supports large-scale distribution operations these generally come to us as RAID/server jobs rather than single drives.
Covering Leigh, Ashton-in-Makerfield and Standish and the surrounding area.
Each town will send us slightly different types of problems due to the economy deciding what people are storing and on what. Wigan's economy is based upon distribution centres strung along the M6, food production, engineering and a large public sector employer base. Therefore the devices we receive here are typically warehouse and stock-control servers, production-line PCs, and CCTV from the distribution centres.
The M6 corridor allows for large scale distribution operations, which as a result normally come to us as RAID/server jobs rather than single drives.
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 original device is cloned as a read-only image which is then used to run all the recovery attempts. Therefore whatever method we use cannot make anything we could have recovered disappear. Data is viewed in its application instead of being counted, items unreadable are identified, and data is returned to Wigan by us on new media with return shipping 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.
Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5AN. Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm. We’re about 17 miles away via the A577 & M6, roughly 40 minutes. Alternatively you may post it insured. Return postage is free whichever option you choose.
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.
Our Manchester office is approximately 17 miles from Wigan, therefore we are much closer than the other end of a courier network. The cost for diagnostics is zero. Most customers don’t incur fees until their data has been successfully recovered. You can walk in with your device, or alternatively you can send it to us insured. Both options begin the process the same way.