Diss keeps a six-acre mere in the middle of town and a fast train to London at the end of it, and manages both without fuss. Failed drives get the same treatment here: posted in, examined properly, answered straight.
Diss jobs are diagnosed free. One fixed written quote before any work begins — no fix, no fee on most recoveries.
Sitting on the county line with the Waveney doing the dividing, Diss picks up work from both sides of it. IP22 sends us small-business drives from the business park and the units off Sandy Lane, laptops belonging to people who commute to Liverpool Street from the station and keep everything locally because the train Wi-Fi is what it is, and a steady run of household externals holding photographs, family history research and years of scanned paperwork. The market has run here since the thirteenth century and the town has the particular self-sufficiency that comes with that: people generally try a few things themselves before ringing, which is fine, so long as the drive is not making a noise while they do it.
Sending it is the easy part. Wrap the bare drive so it cannot shift, post it tracked and insured, and it reaches the bench the next working day from Diss or from any village counter round it. If you have your own courier, book and pay for them yourself and send it that way — it is all the same to the engineer opening the box. If you are driving to Cambridgeshire, a device can be left at the desk on any weekday between 9am and 5:30pm, at Cambridge Data Recovery, Compass House, Vision Park, Chivers Way, Cambridge CB24 9AD. We run no collection service of any sort, and we would rather say so twice than have anyone waiting.
The free diagnostic finishes inside 2 working days of arrival, and produces one written figure that then stays put. Logical faults are no fix, no fee — if the files you want don't come back, you don't pay. Mechanical, electrical, water or fire damage means opening the drive or rebuilding its board, and half the quote is paid before that stage with the balance only on success. Anything in the forensic band — ransomware, camera recorders, BitLocker volumes — is settled in advance and in full, and if it is ransomware, do not pay the people who did it; there are usually better routes back and we will tell you honestly whether yours is one of them.
Phones are out, tablets are out, and so is any memory soldered down onto a mainboard: those are the limits, and the freephone will confirm which side of them your device falls on before you spend anything on postage. Harleston, Eye, Botesdale, Scole, Roydon, Burston and the Waveney villages send parcels on the same terms, whichever county they are technically in.
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.