Thetford sits on the A11 with Cambridge forty minutes down the road, which makes the post-in model faintly obvious. Send the disc tracked, or drop it in on the way past; the free diagnostic takes two working days either way.
Thetford jobs are diagnosed free. One fixed written quote before any work begins — no fix, no fee on most recoveries.
People searching hard disc recovery near Thetford are mostly, and unromantically, dealing with warehouses. The distribution sheds and light-industrial units strung along the A11 and out around Burrell Way run stock systems, camera recorders and back-office machines that fail without warning and take the day's picking with them. Around them sit the engineering and food units that came with the town's expansion, the trades working out of Brandon and Mundford, and a large number of ordinary IP24 households whose entire photographic record lives on one external drive that has been dropped at least once. Thetford has been making things since Burrell built traction engines here; the difference now is that the records live on a disc rather than in a ledger.
Getting it to the bench is straightforward and involves no waiting in. Post the bare disc tracked and insured from the town centre and it lands the next working day. Book your own courier if you prefer — your account, your cost, entirely your call. Or, since the A11 goes exactly where the bench is, bring it yourself: Cambridge Data Recovery, Compass House, Vision Park, Chivers Way, Cambridge CB24 9AD, staffed weekdays from 9am until 5:30pm, two minutes off the A14 at Junction 32. There is no collection service on this site at all, which we say plainly so that nobody sits about expecting one.
What follows is the same for a single memory card and for a rack of drives. The diagnostic costs nothing and is finished inside 2 working days of arrival; you then get one fixed written figure and an honest account of the odds, and nothing chargeable happens until you say so. Purely logical work carries no fix, no fee. Where the drive must be opened in clean air or the board rebuilt — after a knock, a surge, a flood or a fire — you pay half the quote before that work and the balance only if the data is proven back. Ransomware, camera recorders and BitLocker volumes fall in the forensic band, which is settled in full before anything begins.
Two limits, stated once. We take neither phones nor tablets, and we cannot work on memory soldered down onto a mainboard — if it unplugs or unscrews, it is ours; if it is bare chips fixed to the board, it is not. Brandon, Mundford, Watton's edge, East Harling, Garboldisham and the Breckland villages send parcels on identical terms, and 0800 689 0668 is free to ring from any of them.
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.