Repairs
Data recovery in Leeds
The files are the part that actually matters. A computer can be replaced. The photographs cannot. So before anything else, stop using the drive. A computer that is switched on is writing to itself in the background all the time, and it can quietly write over the very thing you are trying to get back. Unplug it, leave it alone, and ring us. We will look at what state the drive is really in at no charge, tell you plainly what we think can be recovered and what cannot, and quote you a fixed price before we attempt anything. Some drives come back in full. Some come back in part. Some are genuinely gone, and you will hear that from us early rather than at the end of a long bill.
- No fix, no fee
- We come to you
- The diagnosis is always free
- A real person who does the work, not a call centre
Do this right now
Lost files? Stop using the device now
- Switch it off and leave it off. A computer that is switched on is writing to itself in the background all the time, and every write can overwrite the very files you want back.
- Do not reinstall Windows, and do not download or run recovery tools onto the drive you want the files back from. The installation itself can write over them.
- Do not keep switching it on to check whether the files have come back, and if the drive is clicking, do not power it up again at all.
- Ring us. The look is free, and we will tell you honestly what can be recovered before you spend anything.
Does this sound like yours?
The faults we see most
- You deleted something you needed, emptied the bin, and realised too late
- A folder of photographs is simply not where you left it, and nobody moved it
- The computer says the drive has to be formatted before you can use it
- The drive is clicking, ticking, or beeping quietly, and it never used to make a sound
- The machine no longer sees the drive at all, as though it had never been plugged in
- The laptop will not start and everything you own is on it
- It says no boot device found, or it loops through a repair screen and never reaches your desktop
- An external drive was knocked off the desk, or the cable came out halfway through a copy, and now nothing on it opens
- The folders are all still there and every one of them is empty
- Files open as nonsense, or they open as nothing at all
- Windows is asking you for a BitLocker recovery key that you have never seen before
- A USB stick or a memory card has stopped being recognised
Not on the list? Call anyway and describe it. The diagnosis is free either way.
What we do
Name the fault, then the fix, then the price
- Tell us what went missing, how it went missing, and what has happened since. That last answer matters more than people expect, because a machine that has carried on being used has had time to write over what you are trying to save
- Stop using it now. Do not switch it back on to check whether the files have reappeared, do not install recovery software onto the drive you are recovering from, and if it is clicking, do not keep powering it up hoping that this time it spins. Every one of those makes it worse, and some of them make it final
- We come to you, and on this job the first visit is often the whole answer. You should not be carrying a sick drive across Leeds in a coat pocket, and you should not have to pull apart a whole office setup to find out whether the files are even in trouble. If the drive turns out to be healthy, we can often have your files copied off while we are stood there
- The first thing we check is whether the drive is the problem at all. A machine that will not start very often has a perfectly good drive inside it, and the fault is the screen, the board or the power. That is the cheapest good news in this trade, and it is the first thing we test rather than the last
- Where the machine is dead but the drive is sound, we take the drive out and read it on our own kit. Where the drive is soldered to the board, which is normal now on slim laptops and on modern Macs, it cannot simply be lifted out and the honest answer changes. We will tell you which of those yours is
- Where a drive is failing but still readable, we image it first and recover from the copy, so a dying drive is not being hammered while we work. A sick drive sometimes gives you one clean read and no more, and it is not worth spending that on impatience
- Deleted files: deleting something usually removes the signpost rather than the file, and the contents sit there until something writes over them. On a spinning hard disk that is often good news. On an SSD it usually is not, because modern SSDs quietly clear deleted blocks by themselves in the background, and once that has happened, no software and no laboratory anywhere can bring those files back. We will tell you which kind of drive you have before you spend a penny, because that single fact changes the answer more than anything else does
- Drives that click, tick or beep have failed mechanically, and that is not a software problem. We do not open drives on a desk. Doing that properly needs a clean environment and matching donor parts, and a drive opened in a spare room is a drive that nobody can recover afterwards, including a proper laboratory. What we will do is tell you straight that this is what you are looking at, explain what that route involves, and leave the decision with you. We are not going to charge you to have a go and finish it off
- Encryption is the one that catches people out. If the drive is encrypted and nobody has the key, the data is gone for everybody, and that includes us. Windows machines are often encrypted out of the box now, and the key is usually sitting in the Microsoft account the computer was set up with. Before you pay anyone anything, go and look for it. We will help you look, and we are not about to bill you for that
- We also check whether it is already saved somewhere before you spend money finding out that it was. Phones back photographs up on their own, and cloud storage catches more than people realise. It would be a poor way to earn a living, charging you to recover a folder that was sitting in your account all along
- Recovered files come back on a drive you keep, because they cannot go back onto the drive that just failed. We will be plain about what came back, too. Recovery is not always tidy: you can get thousands of files back with some of them damaged and some of the names lost, and we would rather you heard that now than felt let down later
- One fixed quote before we attempt anything, and if nothing comes back, there is nothing to pay
How long it takes
An honest answer, not a booking slot
The look is quick. We normally know inside the first visit whether the drive is healthy, sick, or mechanically finished, and that is the answer everything else hangs on. The recovery itself is not quick, and anyone promising you an hour is guessing. A healthy drive out of a dead laptop copies at full speed, and a job like that can be done the same day. A failing drive is a different matter, because it has to be read gently and in passes, and imaging one properly can run for many hours and sometimes across more than a day. That is not slowness, it is the job: read a dying drive hard and fast and you can waste the only good pass it had left in it. Scanning for deleted files depends on the size of the drive, since the scan has to work through the whole of it whether you lost one photograph or ten thousand. And where a drive has failed mechanically and has to go to a laboratory, you are looking at weeks rather than days, and that part is out of our hands. You will know which of these you are in before you commit to anything.
What it costs
The diagnosis is free, then you get a fixed quote
We do not publish a price list, because a price list for this work would be a fiction: the same fault costs different money on different machines. What we can do is tell you what moves the number, then give you one fixed quote before any work starts. If we cannot fix it, there is nothing to pay.
What drives the price
- Whether the fault is logical, meaning the drive still reads and the files need finding, or physical, meaning the drive itself has failed. Those are two entirely different jobs
- What kind of drive it is, because a spinning hard disk and an SSD behave nothing alike once files have been deleted from them
- How healthy the drive still is, since one that reads at full speed is a straightforward copy, and one that has to be coaxed along in passes is a great deal more work
- How much data is on it, and how much of it you genuinely need back, because we can put your photographs and your documents first rather than spend hours rescuing an operating system nobody wants
- Whether it needs a clean room and donor parts, which is specialist laboratory work, is priced by them and not by us, and is by a long way the most expensive road
- Whether the drive can be removed at all, or is soldered to the mainboard as it is on many slim laptops and modern Macs
- Whether you need a drive supplying to put the recovered files onto, since they have to land somewhere that is not the thing that just broke
- How much the machine has been used since the files went missing, which nobody can undo, and which quietly decides the odds before we ever see it
Where we work
We come to you across Leeds
Home or work, Monday to Saturday, 9am to 7pm. There is no walk-in shop, so we come to the machine, or you can arrange to drop it to us. Start at computer repair in Leeds, or pick your area.
Questions
The things people ask
I deleted the files days ago and I have carried on using the computer. Have I ruined my chances?
Not necessarily, but it is the reason we ask you to stop. Deleting a file normally removes the signpost to it rather than the file itself, and the contents sit there until the machine happens to write something else over that space. Every hour the computer stays in use, the chance of that goes up, and it goes up fastest if the drive is nearly full. So the honest answer is that you have shortened the odds and you have not necessarily lost. Switch it off, leave it off, and let us look before anything else gets written.
The drive is clicking. What does that mean?
It means it has failed mechanically, and it means switch it off now. That noise is the head assembly inside trying and failing to read the disc, and every fresh attempt risks it scraping the surface that your files are written on. People power a clicking drive up again and again hoping it catches, and that is what turns a recoverable drive into a genuinely dead one. Nothing you can install will fix it, because the problem is not the software. Getting data off it means opening it in a clean environment with matching donor parts, which is laboratory work. We will tell you honestly if that is where you are, rather than take the job and make it worse.
My laptop will not turn on. Are my files gone?
Usually not, and this is the good news that people do not expect. The drive is very often the healthiest thing in a dead laptop. The fault is much more likely to be the charging port, the battery, the screen or the board, and none of those touch your data. In most cases we can take the drive out, read it on our own kit and have your files back in your hands quickly, and that is true even if the laptop itself never works again. The exception worth knowing is a machine where the storage is soldered to the mainboard, which is common on slim laptops and modern Macs, and there the answer depends on what actually failed. We will tell you which one you have got.
Should I try recovery software myself?
Sometimes, and we would rather say so than take money off you for something you could have done. If you simply deleted files from a healthy spinning hard disk, a decent recovery tool has a fair chance. Two rules if you try it. Never install it onto the drive you are recovering from, because the installation itself can write over the files you want, and recover to a different drive for the same reason. And never run it on a drive that is clicking or that the computer cannot see properly. Software cannot fix a mechanical fault, and hours of scanning while a failing drive labours away is exactly how the last good read gets used up. If it is an SSD, or the drive is making noises, or the files are ones you cannot afford to lose, stop and call us before you experiment.
Can you get everything back?
Sometimes, and we will not promise it before we have looked. Data recovery is the one part of this trade where certainty is always oversold, so here is the truth of it. Plenty of jobs come back in full, particularly a good drive out of a broken machine. Plenty come back in part, which can mean most of your photographs with a handful damaged and some of the file names lost. And some are genuinely unrecoverable, by us or by anybody: a drive whose surfaces have been physically damaged, files that have already been written over, deleted files on an SSD that has cleared the blocks itself, and anything encrypted where the key is lost. When yours is one of those, you will hear it plainly and early. We would rather tell you no for nothing than sell you hope by the hour.
What does data recovery cost?
We will not print a figure, because the same lost folder is a different job on a healthy drive and on a dying one, and a number on a web page would only be a number we had to go back on. What we will do is look for free, work out which situation you are actually in, and give you one fixed price before anything is attempted. Roughly speaking, pulling files off a sound drive is the cheapest end, coaxing them from a failing drive costs more because it takes far longer, and a drive that has to be opened in a laboratory is dearer again and is priced by them rather than by us. You will know which of those you are looking at before you decide anything, and if we recover nothing, you pay us nothing.
Is your work guaranteed after the repair?
Yes. We stand behind the repairs we carry out. If the same fault we fixed returns within a reasonable period as a result of our work, get in touch and we will put it right. That does not cover new or unrelated faults, accidental damage, liquid damage, or problems caused by other work carried out after ours, and nothing in it affects your statutory rights.
Worth reading first
A plain-English guide before you spend anything
- How to back up your files before a repair (or before anything goes wrong) How to back up what matters before you hand a machine over: what to save first, where to put it, and how to copy it across when the computer will barely start.
- The warning signs your hard drive is failing, and what to do about it Strange noises, sudden slowdowns, files that vanish: the early warnings of a failing hard drive, the first thing to do, and the mistakes that make it worse.
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Dead, crashing, overheating, or refusing to charge? We find the real fault for free and quote you a fixed price before anything is opened.
PC and desktop repair
Dead tower, black screen, random restarts, roaring fans, or Windows that will not start? Free diagnosis, fixed quote, no fix no fee.
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Pop-ups, fake warnings, a hijacked browser, or a ransom note? We find out what is genuinely on there, clean it safely, and leave your files where they are.
Liquid & water damage
A spill on a laptop or keyboard? Get it off power now and ring us. This is the one repair nobody can promise, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Tell us what is wrong.
Call and describe the fault. We will diagnose it for free, give you a fixed quote before any work, and if we cannot fix it there is nothing to pay. A real person who does the work, not a call centre.