Mid-Norfolk runs on machinery that gets mended rather than replaced, which is roughly our attitude to hard drives. Post it in from Dereham and you get a straight account of what failed and one figure to decide on.
Dereham jobs are diagnosed free. One fixed written quote before any work begins — no fix, no fee on most recoveries.
Dereham's parcels tell you what the town does. Agricultural engineering has been the trade here for well over a century, and the workshops on Rashes Green and the units round the edge of town keep drawings, parts records and machine data on ordinary PCs that live in dusty rooms and get switched off at the wall. The farms behind them are worse and know it: one office computer in a converted corner, holding movement records, spray diaries, subsidy paperwork and the accounts, backed up — when it is backed up — to an external drive sat six inches away on the same desk. Add the market-day traders, the Mid-Norfolk Railway volunteers with their scanned archive, and the NR19 households whose photographs have migrated from shoebox to hard disc without anyone noticing the risk, and that is a normal week's post.
None of it needs a journey. Wrap the bare drive so it cannot move inside the box, send it tracked and insured, and it is at the bench the next working day. If you already use a courier, book them yourself and send it that way; the arrangement and the cost are yours, and it changes nothing at our end. If a trip to Cambridgeshire is happening anyway, the desk will take a device in person on any weekday between 9am and 5:30pm — Cambridge Data Recovery, Compass House, Vision Park, Chivers Way, Cambridge CB24 9AD. We do not collect, and we don't pretend otherwise on any page of this site.
Diagnosis is free, takes up to 2 working days from arrival, and ends in a single written figure, with the fault named plainly and the odds stated without decoration. Logical faults — deletion, corruption, a disc that shows its folders and opens none of them — are no fix, no fee. Where the drive has to come apart in clean air, or its electronics rebuilt after a surge or a soaking, half the quote is paid up front for that stage and the remainder only on success. Anything forensic — ransomware, camera recorders, BitLocker — is settled in full at the outset instead.
We take no phones and no tablets, and no drive whose memory has been soldered permanently onto a mainboard. Everything else, from a single card out of a combine's monitor to a small server, starts with a free call to 0800 689 0668. Swaffham, Watton, Mattishall, North Elmham, Litcham, Necton and the mid-Norfolk villages between them all send parcels on exactly the same terms.
Most of what reaches this bench arrived by tracked, insured post. It is the steadiest way to move a poorly drive, and a parcel posted in Norfolk is usually on the bench the next working day.
Is the drive still bolted inside a laptop, desktop, MacBook, iMac, server or CCTV / DVR recorder? The hard drive or SSD needs to come out first, and only the bare drive travels — taking drives out of machines is not something we do here. Storage soldered to a motherboard (Apple Silicon Macs, one or two very thin laptops) is the single thing beyond us: if it will not come out, it cannot come in.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Mark the parcel for the attention of Cambridge Data Recovery. From Norwich it is about an hour and twenty down the A11, then two minutes off the A14 at Junction 32 — or next working day by tracked post. You hear from us as soon as it is booked onto the bench.
Unsure what to put in the box? Ring 0800 689 0668 before you seal it, or run the free online diagnostic.
Diagnosis costs nothing, the figure is written down, and most jobs carry no fix no fee. Online or by phone.