Clydebank is known as the birthplace of the Queens and produced sewing machines for Singer, so they know what precision looks like, and once your precision equipment has stopped working, there's no point turning the crank again. Same rule for drives: power off, then twenty minutes east.
Clydebank to Charing Cross is a relatively easy ride: the A814 follows the river and the Clydeside Expressway for about twenty minutes in total (door to door) finishing at Tay House, at the Charing Cross end of Bath Street. Trains on both the Argyle and North Clyde lines leave from Clydebank & Singer stations directly into Glasgow. Post works the same as everywhere: insured, tracked, padded, powered off.
Clydebank has a wealth of industrial history, and its data has range too: college work, archives from CAD work and works records from the remaining industry, and external drives of family photographs passed down for generations, from the tenements to today. Whatever arrives from Clydebank gets imaged before it gets fixed, which is the yard rule applied to platters: measure twice, cut once.
No matter what device arrives, the prices do not change based upon your postcode. There is always a free diagnostic first. The fixed price of the recovery will be agreed to in writing prior to any work. The price is £250 + VAT for cards and sticks. Single drives cost £300 + VAT. RAID systems, NAS devices, and server hardware cost from £500 + VAT. In addition, in most cases you only pay if we have recovered your lost data. All data recovery jobs are completed in-house by our own employees (engineers), and your data never leaves the UK.
Either way, however, do nothing until it's powered down forever; all the time the clicker is damaging heads on the platter(s) and with each boot-up it scores them. Well padded, the postal service is very safe. If you're going to be passing by anyway, we can take this in at our Tay House counter within two minutes once you have a quote.
Yes: we read drives no matter how old (Clydebank sends us plenty), and we read the old interfaces / filesystems / formats with our price being the same as for newer disks. This includes IDE and first generation SATA. The cost to get your data back will be £300 + VAT.
Before you post or drop off your device please get a quote from us by phone or with our form. Then turn it off, properly pad it and choose how to deliver it: either to our counter at Tay House, 300 Bath Street, Monday to Friday 9am–5:30pm, no appointment required, or send it from Clydebank via an insured, tracked postal service. In both cases we will diagnose your device for free and give you a written quotation prior to deciding on how to proceed.
In every instance, all data recovery services, both diagnosis and imaging/data recovery, are performed at our Glasgow laboratory regardless of which city/region the client resides in.
Do not use your drive again. Each additional time you use your drive increases the risk that the remaining recoverable data may be overwritten. A faulty drive's head(s) are also at greater risk of coming into contact with its platter(s). If the system remains active, turn it off safely and then leave it turned off.
Do not run any data recovery software on the original hard disk. Most consumer data recovery programs create their own file indexes on the hard disk being scanned. While this typically does not harm a functioning hard disk containing deleted files, once the hard disk contains bad sector(s) or is mechanically failed, it will limit what was possible through data recovery efforts.
Do not open your drive. Even a small amount of dust entering a drive can damage the surface of the drive after only a few revolutions. If it has already been opened, tell us: it changes our approach, not our willingness to help.
Remove the drive where you can. Please send just the hard drive or SSD. We are not able to accept full computers (laptops/desktops). All computer shops can remove the internal drive from a system within minutes. External drives are the exception and need to be sent complete. Please include the external case/enclosure when sending the drive. This is because many external enclosures contain the bridge board which contains the encryption key. If the drive is sent without the case, then the drive will appear blank/unformatted.
Our diagnostic is free and is a real diagnostic. Our process involves putting your drive on the bench, not through a script, and identifying the type of fault. At this time, we determine if the media on your drive is stable enough to be imaged, and what information may actually be recovered before we discuss cost.
You get a fixed price in writing before work begins. Not a price range or estimate that changes once the job has started. Once you see the fixed price, you decide based upon the price you see. In most cases, no payment is due if we cannot recover your data.
We image first then repair from that copy. Your original drive is read only once using the least invasive method possible with the equipment. Every single repair operation is performed on the image of your original drive. Using this method ensures that your original drive is never damaged further than necessary.
Every step of recovery is done in-house. Your drive will never leave our facility while being worked on. Your data will always remain within the United Kingdom. Once your recovery is complete, you will receive a list of files found on your drive so that you may review them prior to receiving your completed recovery. 30 days after you acknowledge receipt of your completed recovery, all copies of your data stored on our servers will be deleted securely.