Free 48-hour diagnostic, a fixed price agreed before any work, and no fix no fee on most jobs. Serving Wigan and the surrounding Greater Manchester area.
Roughly 25 minutes and 17 miles separate Wigan from our bench — drop it in yourself, or put it in the post.
Covering Leigh, Ashton-in-Makerfield and Standish and the wider Greater Manchester area.
Wigan is seventeen miles from us on the A577 and M6, about 27 minutes. Close enough for same-day drop-off, far enough that plenty of customers send devices by insured post instead.
Wigan runs on distribution centres strung along the M6, food production, engineering, and a large public sector employer base. What that means for us is a particular mix of work: warehouse and stock-control servers, production line PCs, and CCTV from distribution sites. The M6 corridor means large distribution operations, and those tend to arrive as RAID or server jobs rather than single drives.
Covering Leigh, Ashton-in-Makerfield and Standish 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. Wigan is built on distribution centres strung along the M6, food production, engineering, and a large public sector employer base — so the devices that arrive here are warehouse and stock-control servers, production line PCs, and CCTV from distribution sites.
The M6 corridor means large distribution operations, and those tend to arrive as RAID or server jobs rather than single drives.
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 Wigan 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.
Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5AN, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm. We’re about seventeen miles away via the A577 and M6, roughly 27 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 17 miles away rather than at the end of a courier chain. Walk it in, or send it insured — both start the same way.