A steady share of what we recover at the bench is from universities and research groups. The type of work done here is very unique; virtually none of it has any commercial value, but virtually everything we get here is totally unreproducible. It’s the departmental arrays, supervisors’ laptops, fieldwork drives & student machines which have been recovered in Manchester by the engineers who have worked on them, will remain confidential, and will not leave the country.
We handle your research arrays, departmental servers and student drives through our own engineers under UK data residency and return those to you on media you keep.
When there is a closed collection window for a dataset, it does not exist as another version of itself. When you continue to operate the machine, it will always create a less desirable academic recovery. And stopping use of the machine costs nothing.
Greater Manchester is home to four universities, one of the largest student populations in Europe and a huge amount of irreplaceable work.
Manchester Metropolitan and The University of Manchester are close by as well as Salford and Bolton. And just outside that there is Lancaster, Liverpool, and Preston. That is over one-hundred thousand students and a large amount of researchers in a small geographic area – and they produce a very unique type of enquiry.
What shows up is rarely commercial. What you receive can include a thesis three weeks from submission; four years of field data that will never again be available; interviews with participants that have long-since left their previous location(s); or a dataset from a collection window that has closed. All of these items lack economic value and are entirely irreplaceable; and, specifically, this is why attempting a DIY solution would be gambling.
From a single laptop to a research team's shared array.
Both come up on almost every academic enquiry. Both are available at no cost.
Your encryption key almost certainly exists. The University’s computers are usually BitLocker or FileVault encrypted, but students often don’t realise they have an encryption recovery key. They probably do — they’re usually stored in Azure AD, Intune or the university's domain for IT to recover in about two minutes. Ask IT if they can provide your encryption recovery key before freaking out; if they can get it, then your computer will open as normal once you have it. Without it, nobody can open the drive.
Check every other copy first. In some cases the work is still there: in OneDrive or Google Drive version history, in a draft sent to a supervisor, in a shared departmental folder, or even on the machine in the lab where you worked last term. In fact, a considerable number of thesis enquiries end up like this in less than five minutes for free. We’d much rather send you here instead of taking on the task.
Let us know what the due date is at the outset, rather than after the quote, to give us a better idea of how quickly we need to complete the project.
The priority service gives you the ability to have your thesis and data directories completed ahead of time. This allows for delivery of those files when the remainder of the file being imaged is still being created — allowing students to continue writing their thesis, typically within a day, rather than waiting until the end of the project. For many students who are concerned about meeting a set date for submitting their thesis, nothing else compares to this.
A failed hard drive doesn't get magically quicker; a donor drive won't show up overnight. If the deadline isn't reachable, we'll tell you that in the first phone call while you still have time to contact your department to request an extension. A single drive costs from £300 +VAT, with a complimentary 48-hour diagnostic.
Switch it off now, and leave it off, especially if it is making any unusual noise. And for goodness’ sake, please don't start any recovery software, nor continue to restart. Both are ways that you will lose what can be recovered. The state of the laptop really does not matter when the drive pulls out.
Yes, if there's a recovery key available — and most times there is, because the key is usually escrowed to Azure AD, Intune or the domain, and then their IT dept can retrieve it within minutes — ask them first. If the key cannot be found, we can try to perform a password recovery where the password is able to be guessed.
We can provide priority service. Please say so at the outset. When using our service, we image the thesis and data directories first and give those back to you while the rest of the imaging process continues. This allows you to begin writing again instead of having to wait until all imaging has completed.
Yes. We charge from £250 + VAT to £300 + VAT depending upon what type you require. Please send us the entire unit including the enclosure. We would prefer that you leave the hard drive in its case.
Yes. Regardless of if you have an NDA in place, data will remain within the UK, no sub-contracting occurs during any service provided, and once an agreed upon time frame has passed, all working copies of your data will be deleted. Where a department would like a formal agreement, that is straightforward.
From £300 +VAT for a laptop/PC drive. Card/USB media from £250. Department server/NAS from £500. Free 48 hr diagnostic. Fixed written quote prior to work commencing. No cost on most jobs if it fails.
A free diagnostic, written quotation, and all kept in house, confidential, and within Britain.