Looking costs nothing · one fixed figure after
Price your external drive recovery. Tell us the drive and what it is doing; we will tell you what it takes.
This page is for external hard drives: portable, desktop, encrypted, in an enclosure or in a set. Two questions give you a likely cause, the price band and the one thing not worth trying tonight. The short form below opens your case; the fuller booking sheet further down goes in the box. Either way we reply by email with the posting address, the nearest drop-off point and a sheet to print. After the free look you get one figure in writing. A single external drive is £300 + VAT, two-bay and RAID units start at £500 + VAT and larger arrays at £1,250 + VAT, and on most jobs no data means no bill.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0800 6890668
Two questions, and a likely cause.
The order of the job →What kind of drive?
Whichever comes closest will do.
Two taps and you get a plain answer, plus the one action worth taking before any other. A diagnosis it is not; for that the drive has to be in an engineer's hands. Read it as the answer the telephone would give at three in the morning, when the telephone is not there to give it.
Now the detail.
What happens after you send it.
Every band, in prose →An answer inside a working day
A person reads what you write; nothing is sorted by script. Back comes a straight first view of what is likely, one instruction about what not to touch meanwhile, the posting address, the nearest drop-off point and a booking sheet to print. We do not publish the address; it comes by email in reply to the form, and the booking sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Your case number is issued that day and emailed to you.
The bench names the fault Free
A case number goes on the drive and the drive goes onto a bench. A drive that clicks or beeps is not powered again; one that spins is read on our own equipment. That is where the fault is actually named: heads, board, firmware or bridge. Allow about 48 hours for one drive; sets take longer, and you are told which at booking-in.
The figure, and your decision
The figure arrives in writing, the findings alongside it. Accept it and work begins. Decline and the drive travels home with the postage at our end. Nothing is owed for the free look in either case, and nothing further down the page quietly undoes that.
The booking sheet: on screen, printed, or both.
Getting it packed.
Run through this before taping it
- Put every password on the sheet, or send it by email once the case is open: the WD Security password, the BitLocker recovery key, the FileVault password, the keypad PIN. Encryption has no side door for a laboratory either.
- Name whatever you cannot do without: list those folders and the copying begins there.
- Say what it sounds like. A click, a beep, a whirr that stops: the sound tells us what to expect before the parcel is open, and whether the drive should be powered at all.
- Be honest about what has been tried. A drive that was tapped, frozen, opened or had its board swapped is a different job, and knowing helps us plan it.
Worth saying twice: whatever the checker said, leave the drive unplugged. A great deal of the work on this bench was made harder by one further attempt to see whether today might be different.
The questions that come up first.
Is the checker actually a diagnosis?
It is not. What the checker does is infer from the boxes you ticked. A diagnosis means your drive in an engineer's hands at the bench, the fault named and possibilities ruled out one by one — and only that sets a price. Take the checker's word on what to leave alone tonight; take the bench's word on cost.
How much will it be?
One external hard drive, of any kind, is £300 + VAT. Once a second drive is involved — a two-bay unit, a RAID, a Drobo — the entry point moves to £500 + VAT, and larger arrays begin at £1,250 + VAT. The pricing page sets it all out in prose, and the free look is what produces your one written figure.
Is no data, no bill genuinely true?
On most jobs, yes: nothing recovered means nothing to pay. Two kinds of work fall outside it — a drive another laboratory has already opened, and a drive that has been opened or had its board swapped at home. If yours is one of those you are told at the outset, well before you agree to spend a penny.
Why is there no address on the site?
So that every parcel that arrives is already matched to a case. The address comes by email the moment the form is sent, together with packing instructions. Nothing is collected, and there is no counter to walk up to.
How soon does an answer come?
Within one working day at the outside, and usually much faster while the desk is staffed. The free look is slower: reckon on about 48 hours once a single drive is on a bench.
A price inside two minutes.
Checker, form, parcel, bench — and the decision is yours, made with one figure in front of you and nothing to pay for the looking.