Specialist · Toshiba Satellite
Toshiba left the laptop trade years ago, so every Satellite still in use is an old machine being asked to do a day's work. Four sorts reach us from Cardiff: a clamshell with no light in it at all, a tired MQ01 or MQ04 disk stalling on its own sectors, a late model whose M.2 card the BIOS has stopped listing, and a Satellite Pro shut by BitLocker with the key at a workplace that has moved on. The diagnosis settles which, and it costs nothing.
Describe the symptoms to an engineer
0800 6890668
| What shows up | What has gone wrong | Do this now |
|---|---|---|
| A Satellite that shows no light | The power board, the screen or its cable — the disk behind them is untouched | Stop pressing the power button |
| A late model with no disk in the BIOS | Its M.2 controller has stopped answering, so the firmware finds nothing at all to start from | Post the card by itself, antistatic |
| Folders that take a minute to open | Heads on an MQ01 going weak, and the sectors under them fading | Switch it off now and copy nothing more |
| A snapped hinge on a lid carried for years | Shock: the case flexed, and the disk inside took it | Keep it shut down until an engineer has seen it |
| A Satellite Pro asking for 48 digits | BitLocker is on, and its key sits in the account that machine belongs to | Get the key from IT before posting |
| A Satellite looping through repair | The file table is broken; what it points at is still there | Switch it off and break the loop |
The diagnosis costs you nothing. Every item that arrives is logged under a case number of its own, and an engineer works out what has actually failed — then tells you plainly which files can come back and which cannot. The price follows that: one fixed figure, in writing, and no work begins until you have read it and said go ahead.
A dead Satellite does not get power put through it over and over on the chance that it wakes. The disk comes out first, goes onto a port of ours, and a few minutes later we know which half of the machine has actually failed.
A spinning MQ01 or MQ04 is opened under clean air, its donor matched by family and batch. Heads gone weak are worked slowly. A BitLocker volume simply waits: nothing legible leaves it until the key arrives, and we say so rather than bill for the delay.
A tired 2.5in disk is read in short runs with rests between them, and the awkward regions are left until the rest is safely down. An M.2 card is treated no differently. Some jobs take days of that, not hours.
Nothing is billed while you are still deciding. A complete listing of what came off the drive reaches you first, and the invoice only follows your yes. Files travel back on media bought new for the job, return postage ours, and we do not close it here until every one of them opens on the machine you will use.
Where we stop: BitLocker really does encrypt. With no recovery key from the account that machine belongs to, the disk stays shut, and no laboratory anywhere alters that. Physical damage has a limit of its own: where a failed head has scored the platter, the coating that held those files is gone, and nothing brings it back. The file list reaches you before any money does.
Eight years in a rucksack, and the hinge finally pulled away from the lid; after that it would not power up at all. It came to us boxed and whole. An M.2 SATA card sat in the slot, and taped into the box was the original MQ01ABD100 the owner had lifted out when she upgraded. Each was imaged on its own, the old disk in short runs across two days. All of the card came back, and most of the disk with it.
Not usually. Far more often the fault sits in front of the disk rather than in it — the power board, a charger socket that has been wobbling for a year, the screen or the cable feeding it — and none of that is visible from the outside. So the disk comes out and goes onto a port of ours, where within minutes it either answers or it stays silent. If it answers, your job is a copy rather than a recovery, and it costs less. The diagnosis is free and it answers that question first, so a price only reaches you afterwards, never the other way about.
The disk on its own, wherever you can get at it. On most Satellites that means one screw-down cover underneath and a 2.5in disk sitting in a caddy; on the last models it is a short M.2 card instead. Note which slot it came from, wrap it, post that. Send the machine complete only if the lid has come apart, if liquid got in, or if you would rather an engineer opened it — a boxed laptop costs more to send and picks up fresh dents on the way.
BitLocker is genuine encryption, and Windows 11 switches device encryption on by itself, so plenty of owners meet it for the first time as a screen wanting 48 digits. The key is lost less often than people fear: on a home machine it is held in the Microsoft account that was signed in, and on a Satellite Pro from work it sits with whoever built the fleet. Track it down before the parcel goes. A locked disk can be imaged and held here in safety, but what is on it stays noise until that key surfaces.
Yes. Toshiba left the laptop trade, but its 2.5in disks were sold by the million and matching mechanisms are still about, which is what a head transplant asks for: the same family, and as near the same batch as we can find. None of the work depends on Toshiba still being there. Give us the model number off the base plate and the label on the disk itself, and we will say what is in the drawer.
A failing drive has only so many starts left in it. Spend none of them. Keep the power off, and the free diagnosis will tell you what is still readable.