A corrupt file is a locked box with the contents usually intact inside. The Word document “cannot be opened”, the photo that renders half grey, the video that plays sixty seconds then dies, the archive that errors at 90% — in each, a damaged container is refusing to present largely-undamaged contents. Repair works on the box; salvage works past it. We do both.
Files corrupt at three moments. Mid-write: the power cut, the crash, the USB yanked while saving — the file’s structure gets half-updated and no longer parses. On failing media: weak sectors return garbage for the middle of an otherwise fine file — here the drive itself is the patient, and it gets imaged before any file is touched. In transit: a flaky cable or interrupted transfer delivers a truncated copy, and the original may still exist complete at the source.
Diagnosing which moment matters, because repairing files on a failing drive without imaging first is treating the symptom while the disease spreads.
Container repair is format-specific craft: rebuilding a DOCX or XLSX’s internal zip so Office will parse it, reconstructing a JPEG’s headers so the intact image data displays, re-indexing an MP4 whose “moov atom” died with the camera battery, coaxing a truncated archive to yield everything before the tear. Alongside it runs version archaeology: autosaves, temp files, shadow copies and application caches routinely hold a healthy sibling of the broken file — sometimes the fastest fix is finding yesterday’s copy nobody knew existed.
All of it on copies. A corrupt file can always get worse; ours never do, because the original stays untouched.
Straight talk: repair rebuilds structure around surviving data — it cannot conjure content that was never written or was physically destroyed. A video missing its middle third comes back missing its middle third, playable around the gap. A database page that returned zeros stays zeros. What you get from us is the maximum the surviving bytes support, plus a plain statement of what didn’t survive — before you pay, not after.
A single affected drive is a fixed £300 + VAT, whatever the fault turns out to be; the rare chip-level exception is quoted in writing first. Everything starts with a free diagnostic, the figure goes in writing before work begins, and on most jobs nothing is owed unless the data comes back. No hourly meter, no evaluation fee, no percentage of what the files are worth.
Rarely — modern Office files are zip containers full of parts, and usually one damaged part is blocking the rest. The text is typically recoverable nearly whole, formatting mostly, embedded items case-by-case. Autosave and temp copies often shortcut the whole repair. Send the file and its drive; we’ll take the fastest honest route.
Usually — a playback that dies at a fixed point means index damage or a truncated stream, and the footage beyond the stop is normally still present. We rebuild the index against the actual stream data and deliver video that plays through. If frames are genuinely absent, you’ll get everything around the gap and a straight account of it.
That pattern points at the drive, not the files — spreading weak sectors or early controller failure corrupting whatever gets read or written. Treat it as a failing-drive emergency: stop using it, no scans, no repairs-in-place. The drive gets imaged gently first; the files get fixed from the image.
Often, for the mid-write and bad-copy cases — a lone file can frequently be rebuilt as-is. But if there’s any chance the media is failing or a healthier version exists in temp files or shadow copies, the drive multiplies your options. Rule of thumb: one odd file, send the file; several, or a suspect drive, send the drive.
Two honest routes, no vans. Hand the device in at Tay House, 300 Bath Street — right at Charing Cross, two minutes off the M8 — Monday to Friday, 9am–5:30pm. Or wrap it well and send it by insured, tracked post from anywhere in the UK. The work is done in-house by our own engineers, with a documented chain of custody, and your data never leaves the UK.
What Windows actually means by that message, and why running chkdsk can make it permanent. Read it →
Every re-save and repair-in-place gambles the surviving contents. Corrupted file recovery for Glasgow — container surgery and version archaeology from safe copies, with the honest limits stated up front. Free assessment, Charing Cross or post.