Devices · notebooks and desktop towers
Nothing is charged for looking. One drive is £300 + VAT, put in writing before any billable work begins. The bulk of what arrives has a failed screen, mainboard or charging circuit with an untouched drive sitting behind it. Now and then the drive is itself the fault, which makes for different work. In both situations the drive is the part we need, and it posts from anywhere in London for the price of a small parcel.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
| What is going on | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| HP: SMART Hard Disk Error 301 on Hard Disk 1 | SMART has already failed that drive and the BIOS will not boot from it | Treat it as real, and image the drive today |
| HP: Boot Device Not Found, 3F0 | The BIOS has nothing it can boot | Either a connector is badly seated or the drive has failed |
| Dell ePSA, error code 2000-0142 | ePSA has failed the drive, the heads being the usual reason | Do not run it through again |
| Dell ePSA, error code 2000-0146 | The drive's own log has been filling with errors for months | None of this started today |
| Lenovo 2100 — the BIOS cannot detect HDD0 | Nothing answers on that channel — cable, or drive | Get it imaged before anybody starts reseating plugs |
| The screen reads: A disk read error occurred | The boot sector will not read, and probably a good deal more | One more restart changes nothing |
| BIOS — Reboot and Select proper Boot Device | The BIOS can find nothing there to start | Name the fault before anybody reinstalls |
A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.
Whatever unclips comes out the day the parcel arrives, and the remainder of the computer waits on a shelf while the job runs. With the flash soldered on there is no connector to pull, so attention shifts to the board itself and every chip is read in situ.
Should the drive turn out to be the fault, it goes into the same queue as any other hard disk or SSD. Where the computer has stopped and the drive is fine, imaging is the entire job.
Entire user profiles go home on fresh media — documents, desktop, mail stores — in the arrangement they were found in, and we pay the postage back. The file listing goes to you for approval, and only after that does an invoice exist.
What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine of your own.
What comes to us from this part of the world: encrypted work laptops off City legal floors and out of the Croydon office blocks, fleets reissued and re-imaged by a Barnet supplier, and the Bromley one-man business whose accounts PC is also the household computer. One pattern runs through all of it. Where the manufacturer's diagnostic has already named the drive, the drive is usually right to be named, and the job turns into plain drive work of the sort described on our hard drive and SSD pages.
The laptop was finished; the disk in it did nothing but click. A matching donor supplied the heads, imaging was deliberately run at a crawl, and by the third day the lesson plans, the reports and the marks for five years were all back with her.
Where it sits in a caddy, or comes away under one screw, that part alone can travel: less to post, and a small parcel takes the journey better. Any repair shop will free it in a couple of minutes. Two exceptions, though — flash soldered to the mainboard, and not knowing which sort you have. On either count, pack the machine as it is.
Nearly always. In most cases the drive outlives the computer, because what finishes a laptop is its screen, its mainboard or the circuit that charges it. Lifting a sound drive out of a machine that will not start is about the fastest and least expensive work we do.
Only where the key has gone. Encrypted volumes go through here several times in an ordinary week, provided you send the password, or that 48-digit recovery key, in with the computer. Lacking both, the volume stays closed — precisely as designed. Dig yours out before the parcel is sealed.
Frequently a good deal. An installation writes over part of the drive only; the remainder sits as it did. What eats the rest is whatever happens next — so switch it off, set it aside, and use a different machine.
Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the drive switched off.