The bench · call in, files home
Seven stages, and two are your decision.
Every case follows the same seven stages in the same order. It starts with your phone call. It ends when you have looked through what came back and told us you are happy. Here is the whole run, with the two moments where the decision is yours alone.
Describe the symptoms to an engineer
0800 6890668
Here is how it goes, in order.
Make the call
Ring the office or send the quote form. Say what the device did when it stopped, and which folders you cannot lose. You get an honest read on the odds, plus exact packing instructions before anything moves.
Post it to Bristol
Our intake lab is in central Bristol, east along the M4. Send it tracked and insured, printed shipping form packed alongside, or drop it in. Pull the bare drive out of a laptop, PC or video recorder; a NAS or RAID travels as loose disks, labelled by bay.
A case number, and a diagnosis at no cost Free
The parcel is opened and logged under its own reference. Then it goes on the bench for a proper examination: which part has failed, what the odds of a recovery look like, and how much work it means.
You decide
You get one figure in writing, and it does not move afterwards. Agree and the bench starts. Decline and the device comes home with our findings attached. Either way the diagnosis has cost you nothing.
Inside the lab
No repair starts until a complete sector-by-sector image is on our storage. Everything afterwards — donor head swaps, firmware work, unlocking, rebuilding an array — is done to that copy. Your original is left exactly as it arrived.
Your sign-off
You see a full list of everything recovered before any invoice is raised, and you check it against the folders you named at the start.
Files come home
Whatever we get back leaves on media we supply, and the post home is paid. The images we worked from are wiped after thirty days. The case is done when you say so.
How long each kind of job takes.
| Kind of fault | Our method | Bench time |
|---|---|---|
| Software faults: deleted, formatted, corrupted | File system rebuilt from the image | 2–3 working days |
| Mechanical: clicks, knocks, no spin | Matched donor parts, then a slow image | 3–5 working days |
| Multi-disk: RAID, NAS, servers | Every member imaged, then rebuilt virtually | 3–4 working days |
| Encrypted volumes and evidence cases | Scope agreed first, with a schedule to match | Set out in the quote |
| Real emergencies | A halted business or a fixed deadline goes to the front of the queue and runs overnight | Say so on the phone |
What to put in the box.
What people want to know before posting.
Will I hear from you while it is on the bench?
Yes. Each stage on this page ends with a message from us. In between, ring the office and ask. There is no portal to log into and no ticket sitting in a queue going cold.
What if the recovery fails?
Most jobs carry no fee if we get nothing back. If a different lab has a better shot at it, we will say so and give you the name. And when the data really has gone, you will hear that plainly instead of a run of hopeful updates.
Who actually works on my drive?
Our engineers, at our own bench in Bristol. Nothing is subcontracted and nothing leaves the country. One case number follows your device from the parcel being opened to its return.
What happens to your working copies?
We hold the images for thirty days after your files go home, in case you spot a gap and want another look. On day thirty-one they are securely wiped and nothing is kept.
Nothing moves until you ring.
One phone call, or the form, and a case is open. The look is free and you are committed to nothing.