Devices · notebooks and desktop towers
You don't get charged to look. A single drive costs £300 + VAT, and this is put in writing prior to undertaking any billable work. Most of the machines people ask us about have a broken screen, a failed motherboard or a dead charging circuit, and yet the drive is still good. Occasionally the failure is within the drive itself, and therefore requires completely different work. Regardless of whether your issue was related to the drive or something else entirely, the drive is the component we want, and it can be posted from anywhere in London for the cost of sending 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 previously failed this drive, and therefore the BIOS will not boot from it. | Consider this one real; image the drive immediately. |
| HP: Boot Device Not Found, 3F0 | The BIOS does not have anything to boot. | Either the connector is badly seated, or the drive itself has failed. |
| Dell ePSA, error code 2000-0142 | The ePSA has determined this drive has failed, with head failure most often the cause of this failure. | Do NOT repeat running this test. |
| Dell ePSA, error code 2000-0146 | This drive has had issues for months (it is throwing errors in its own log). | None of this started today |
| Lenovo 2100: the BIOS cannot find HDD0 | That channel is dead silent: either the cable or the drive is not responding. | Get an image of the drive prior to anyone reseating any cables. |
| Screen reads: "A disk read error occurred". | It cannot read the boot sector; nor likely much else. | One more restart changes nothing |
| BIOS: Reboot and Select proper Boot Device. | The BIOS cannot find anything to start from. | Identify the problem before anyone reinstalls. |
As soon as your parcel arrives here, an engineer assigns a case number that same day, prior to determining what has really failed, which is the first thing done and costs you nothing. In addition to a note of what can and cannot be recovered from your drive, you will receive at the same time the fixed, written price for restoring what can be recovered. You can accept this quote, or decline it, which will result in no further obligation on your part and nothing owed to us.
Anything that clips out will be removed before the parcel is sent; this means the drive will be the only thing that comes to us, and the rest of the computer will remain with you during the time the job is being completed. Where the flash is soldered onto the board there isn't a connector to pull, and we do not take on soldered storage; call us first if you're unsure what type of storage you have.
If we determine that the drive is bad, it enters into the same queue as any other hard disk or SSD. When a computer fails and the drive itself is working properly, the imaging is the total amount of work required.
All of a user's profile information leaves for delivery on new media: documents, desktops, email stores, everything arranged just like we found it, and we pay the postage back. We send you the list of files so you can approve it first, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
You will see what has been recovered as a list first, after which a bill exists. Accepting the list means that a bill will be issued. Rejecting the list means that a bill will not be issued, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. The recovered data travels from here back to you via new media purchased specifically for your project, with the cost of postage paid by us. Your case is not resolved (i.e., "closed") until you personally view the files on a computer of your own.
What comes to us from this part of the world: drives from encrypted work laptops used by lawyers in City offices and in Croydon office blocks, from fleets of computers re-issued and re-imaged by a company based in Barnet, and from a one-man business in Bromley whose accounts PC is also the household computer. There is one common theme throughout all of them. If the manufacturer's diagnostic has identified the drive as bad, most of the time it's correct, and the job becomes simply plain drive work similar to the types discussed on our hard disk and SSD pages.
The laptop was dead; the single disk inside would do nothing but click. A matching donor supplied suitable heads; imaging was deliberately run at a crawl, and by the third day she had five years' worth of lesson plans, reports and marks back.
As long as it fits in a caddy or comes loose under one screw, that is the only piece of equipment that needs to travel: it is cheaper to post, and a smaller parcel will generally make its way through better than a larger one. Any local repair shop will be able to remove it in just a few minutes. There are, however, two exceptions: when the flash has been soldered onto the main board, and when you aren't sure which type you have. Soldered storage devices are not accepted, and if you're unsure which type you have, call us first.
Nearly every time. More often than not, drives last longer than computers because the screen, mainboard, and charging circuits are usually the first to fail on laptops. Reading a sound drive removed from a non-starting machine is one of the quickest and cheapest tasks we do.
Only if the key has been lost. This is where encrypted volumes come when they have to be read (provided you send us the password, or your 48-digit recovery key) multiple times per week. If both of those items are missing, the volume remains locked, just like it’s supposed to. Get yours out before you seal up the parcel.
More often than not, a good deal. The initial installation can overwrite some space on the disk but leaves the remaining area untouched. It's everything else that comes next that consumes that unused area. So turn it off, set it aside and use a different machine.
It doesn't cost you anything for us to look at it. All we do is give you a breakdown of what opened and what did not, plus a single fixed price to complete, written down before you agree to let us continue. On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. Please don't turn on the drive until you get that breakdown.