North Walsham sits between the Broads and the gas terminals, which gives us an unusual mix of failed drives. Every one travels the same route: tracked post to our bench, then a straight answer.
North Walsham jobs are diagnosed free. You receive a fixed written quote before any work is performed, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
NR28 is a quiet but busy postcode. On its eastern side are the Broads, and along with the boatyards there is an ongoing supply of memory cards and external drives filled with photos taken from the water (herons, sails, sunsets and grandchildren), all without being backed up. To the north lies Bacton, with the gas terminals and the contractors that serve them; they produce survey data, inspection reports and site laptops that matter a great deal for a few weeks, and then matter absolutely for a decade. Between these two is the town itself: the market place, the college, the trades, and the small businesses whose accounts and customer records are kept on one computer in a back office. The Paston family wrote their letters from a few miles away, and those survived six hundred years, which is more than can be said for most external drives.
There is nothing to arrange and nobody to wait in for. Get a quote first, by telephone or using our free online diagnostic. Next, wrap your bare drive or tape your memory card into folded stiff card, then send the package tracked and insured, and it will be on our bench by the next working day. If you use your own courier, that is fine too; you simply book it and pay for it yourself. The desk will also take a device in person, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, without an appointment, at Cambridge Data Recovery, Compass House, Vision Park, Chivers Way, Cambridge CB24 9AD, if a trip that way is happening anyway. Please note, however, that we do not collect, from here or anywhere else.
The diagnostic is free, with the results within 2 working days of arrival, and it ends with one fixed written figure and realistic expectations of what will come back. On logical work, you only pay if we recover your data. If a drive needs to be opened on our head-swap bench, or have its board rebuilt due to impact, an electrical fault, water or fire, half of the quoted price is paid before that stage, and you only pay the remaining amount on success. Ransomware, camera recorders and BitLocker are forensic work and are paid upfront once you accept the fixed quote; and as for paying the ransomware? The answer is simply no, never pay it.
The exclusions are short: phones, tablets, and any memory soldered down onto a logic board. Everything else, from a card out of a bridge-mounted camera to a small office server, starts with a free call to 0800 689 0668. Worstead, Stalham, Happisburgh, Mundesley, Wroxham's northern edge and the Broads-side villages post in on the same terms.
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.
Diagnosis costs nothing, a fixed price is written down, and in most cases you will only be charged if we recover your data. Online or by phone.