Four short steps (device, maker, symptom) and out comes an engineer's read-out: what is likely to be wrong, what needs doing now and how long that repair normally takes. Leave your details and we'll confirm it with you personally, as soon as we can.
There are no charges to find out, not online and not on the bench. Money only comes into it once you approve a fixed quote, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
Once the free diagnostic has been completed, the exact price is put in writing, and there is no cost to find out. In a logical recovery (deleted, formatted or corrupted files), you only pay if we recover your data. Drives with electronic, mechanical or physical damage, or exposure to water or fire, need invasive procedures, so 50% of the quote must be paid before we start, and the remaining balance is only due if we recover your data. All of it is put in writing before anything is touched.
Post to: Cambridge Data Recovery, Compass House, Vision Park, Chivers Way, Cambridge CB24 9AD, marked for the attention of Cambridge Data Recovery. Downloads: ↓ shipping form (PDF) · ↓ terms & conditions (PDF)
Leave your contact details and an engineer will call you back with the next step and the likelihood of success. Nothing is owed and nothing is assumed.
An engineer will read through it personally and get back to you very quickly. Are you ready to post the drive now? Please send it to Compass House, Vision Park, Chivers Way, Cambridge CB24 9AD, marked for the attention of Cambridge Data Recovery.
Would you prefer to speak to someone? Then ring 0800 689 0668 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm). Explaining the fault down the phone works just as well.
The majority of jobs on the bench fall into one of three fixed bands. The device sets the price, not how desperate the situation is. After the free diagnostic there will be one written figure. On logical recoveries you only pay if we recover your data. Drives with electronic, mechanical, physical, water or fire damage need invasive work, so half of the quote is paid before proceeding, and the balance only if we recover your data (see below).
USB sticks and memory cards — SD, microSD and CF.
One hard drive or SSD, internal or external, from a laptop, desktop or Mac.
RAID, NAS and servers, imaged and rebuilt per drive and priced to the job.
CCTV/DVR recorder drives are a fixed £400 + VAT, and a standard forensic investigation is £800 + VAT; in each case you pay upfront once you accept the fixed quote (larger cases are scoped and quoted in writing). On logical recoveries you only pay if we recover your data: deleted, formatted or corrupted data, or a healthy drive the system simply cannot see. Drives with electronic, mechanical, physical, water or fire damage are different: they need invasive work (a new PCB or controller, head/motor repair, NAND chip-off or firmware/service-area access), so 50% of the quoted price is payable upfront for the donor parts and lab time, and the remaining 50% only if we recover your data. Jobs at the difficult end (for example a board burned beyond reading, media snapped through, or a rebuild across a whole shelf of disks) sit above those bands. The figure for those is written down after the free diagnostic, and nothing will start until you have seen it.
Every device is given a proper engineering examination, not a 5 minute scan with a free scanner. Within 2 working days of arrival you will have answers on all six of these:
First, we look at the electrics: the board, bridge and power rails are checked, and the drive's unique ROM is secured before anything else happens.
The heads, spindle motor and the surface of the platters are checked before the drive is asked to perform a single hard read.
The service area and translator are inspected on the PC-3000, where faults are hidden from view by normal software.
A measured read on our hardware imagers shows how much of those platters or NAND chips will actually give up data.
The file system is mapped: what is whole, what is damaged, and which of your actual folders will make it back to you.
One price for your recovery, set against the actual fault. Take it or leave it; either way you owe nothing.
Most items arrive at this bench by insured and tracked post. We recommend getting a quote first, either by telephone or using our free online diagnostic, and once you have received your quote, simply post the item. Post is the steadiest way to move a poorly drive, and a parcel sent from Norfolk typically arrives on the bench within a working day.
Is the drive still bolted inside a laptop, desktop, MacBook, iMac, server or CCTV / DVR recorder? Before sending, remove the hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD), as we do not accept whole units. From a DVR or recorder, send just the disk. From a server or RAID, take out the disks and clearly label each disk by bay number. A network attached storage (NAS) device may be sent as its disks if they can be removed; otherwise please send the NAS itself. There is only one type of drive we are unable to accept: storage soldered onto a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs, extremely thin laptops). In such cases, if the storage cannot be taken out it cannot be accepted. If you are unsure whether you have a removable drive or not, call us before sending anything.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Please mark the parcel for the attention of Cambridge Data Recovery. It takes about an hour and twenty minutes to travel from Norwich along the A11, then two minutes off the A14 at Junction 32. Otherwise you can post it using a tracked service and we will receive it the following working day. We will contact you as soon as we have your drive and it is booked onto our bench.
If you're unsure of what to include in the box, please call us on 0800 689 0668 before sealing it. Or, for a first view on what we can do, you can use our free online diagnostic.
Wrap it properly, put a note with your name and number in the box, and send it tracked.