Home towers, office workstation PCs and all-in-one PCs: we get the data back if a desktop won't start or one of its internal drives is dead. Just pull the drive out and get a quote over the phone (0800 689 0668), or use our free online diagnostic, and then you can post it in to us from anywhere in Staines or the local areas of Surrey.
Every desktop computer job comes with a free diagnostic. Each job receives a fixed price written quote before any work is done.
Normally you only pay if we recover your data. For electronic, mechanical and chip-level work, fifty percent is due upfront, with the remaining fifty percent only if we recover your data. BitLocker, ransomware, CCTV/DVR and forensic jobs require payment upfront once you have accepted the fixed quote. Details of what it may cost can be found on the data recovery costs page.
Every desktop job starts once each symptom is matched to its actual cause, and these twelve cover almost everything that reaches the bench.
It doesn't matter whether it's a failing hard drive or corrupted system files: the documents will still be recovered directly from the disk.
That noise is not normal operation: those sounds mean the mechanical parts of the drive are failing at this very moment. Stop using it immediately and don't try to restart it.
A power surge during a thunderstorm or a cheap power supply unit (PSU) can burn out the electronic components of a drive. A PCB (printed circuit board) repair combined with a ROM chip transfer may allow recovery of your data.
Is the drive not showing up at all? It has usually dropped off the bus, which can be down to the electronics or the firmware, though sometimes it's nothing more than a failed connection.
Most of your older files remain intact under your newer installation, but every day you keep using your computer reduces their chances of surviving.
Even after emptying the Recycle Bin or deleting with Shift+Delete, data remains recoverable until it's overwritten.
Even one patch of bad sectors can freeze an entire PC; hardware-based imaging systems allow us to read around the damaged sectors.
First, an image of the infected desktop is created, then the data is extracted cleanly. Our ransomware page explains the detail.
A striped pair doubles the risk of failure, so both member disks are imaged prior to attempting a rebuild.
Old computers containing IDE and/or SCSI disks can be read using adapters we have purchased and still have available.
After years of service many Barracuda and WD Blue desktop drives will fail their heads; the heads are replaced on our head-swap bench with matching donor parts.
Many older systems such as Fujitsu Esprimo and Packard Bell iMedia towers contain ageing IDE/SATA drives which may have worn-out motors and faulty electronic circuits.
Getting at the drive in a desktop computer is quite easy: it simply pulls out, and the recovery follows the same process as for any other hard drive or SSD. An all-in-one, like a lot of family touchscreen PCs, is more of a laptop job really, though we'd still only want the drive sent, not the whole computer. If you have a workstation with two drives or a motherboard RAID setup, let us know when you ring for a quote (0800 689 0668) or use the free online diagnostic, so that we can image the disks and rebuild them in the correct order.
Often shops, or relatives and friends with good intentions, reinstall Windows (the operating system) to try to "correct" a glitch, and the Documents folder disappears with it. The old files are usually still on the hard drive, underneath the new installation. The sooner you stop using that machine, the better: the longer you keep running it, the less we are likely to be able to recover.
Regardless of what a tower has for storage (hard drives, SSDs or a combination of both), it meets our complete hard drive and SSD stack, with the legacy shelf on standby for older drives:
Our bench gives direct access to the firmware of every drive we service, regardless of the age of the unit or its interface.
When a desktop drive is shaky, we capture it one sector at a time, and the retries are controlled in hardware rather than software.
Clicking drives usually need new heads, and we fit donor ones on our head-swap bench, matched from the parts we've got in stock.
IDE/PATA, SCSI and first-generation SATA all connect directly, so two decades of retired family PCs are still readable.
Your drive is duplicated in full on hardware imagers first, and the work of recovering your information is then done on that exact duplicate, so the original is spared.
Every job gets read-only imaging before any analysis, with no exceptions.
All types of desktop computers (from gaming machines and office fleets to the family tower that's held everything since 2011, and all-in-ones that are really laptops behind a monitor) commonly use Seagate Barracuda and Western Digital Blue desktop hard disk drives. These are the usual casualties, failing due to failed heads (after many years) or losing their printed circuit board to an electrical surge. Older Fujitsu Esprimo and Packard Bell iMedia towers usually have ageing IDE or SATA hard disk drives which eventually seize up, or "drop" off the system bus.
Packard Bell was among the best-selling PC makers on the high street in the 2000s, with thousands sold through outlets including PC World and mail-order catalogues, so we aren't surprised to see iMedia towers turning up from studies and lofts throughout Surrey (and well beyond) after years left undisturbed. Usually it's one of two jobs. Either the tower won't boot any more, or someone's run a factory restore or a fresh Windows install over years of family photos. Neither is unusual for us; we take the hard drive out, image the whole thing, and then lift the older files from that image rather than from the ageing drive itself.
The line of HP desktops ranges from home towers like the Pavilion and Slimline to the ProDesk and EliteDesk bought by offices in bulk, and Compaq Presarios from either side of the 2002 HP and Compaq merger still arrive containing payroll records and early digital photo collections. A regular arrival is the machine stopped at boot by HP's SMART Hard Disk Error 301 message. It is firmware shorthand for a drive on its way out, and indicates that you should turn off the computer and keep it off. From current SATA models to the IDE drives found in older Presario systems, the drive itself is all we need you to post, once you have received a quote via telephone (0800 689 0668) or completed the free online diagnostic. Our bench takes it from there.
Dell OptiPlex and Lenovo ThinkCentre towers fill Britain's offices, and we receive many drives from ones that businesses have decommissioned. These drives often hold the only copy of old accounts, correspondence or CAD archives. Many workstation desktops (Dell Precision and Lenovo ThinkStation) pair their drives using Intel's onboard RAID. If yours is one of those, please get a quote first by calling us on 0800 689 0668 (free calls) or filling out our free online diagnostic, then post all the drives to us together, with a note describing which port each drive was connected to. The compact models (such as the Dell OptiPlex Micro and Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny) replace full-size hard disk drives with 2.5-inch or M.2 disks. Once these are unplugged, the data can be recovered just as readily as from the larger disks.
The drive has to be removed from your computer before you post it, because we only work on the bare drive. If you are unsure how to remove it, call us on 0800 689 0668 for a quote before sending the drive, or a local PC repair shop will take it out for you for a small fee.
Remove the side of the tower and unplug the drive (typically there are two screws to remove, plus the SATA and power cables). Once you've had a quote over the phone (0800 689 0668) or through our free online diagnostic, wrap the drive and post it to us on its own. Drive removal isn't a service we offer, so the tower does need opening at your end. However, this is a cost advantage when it comes to postage, since your computer never has to leave home.
Get a quote from us first, either by phone or through the free online diagnostic. After that, post your device to us tracked and insured, or bring it to the Guildford lab yourself.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV/DVR or server? You will need to remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive, as we are unable to remove the drive for you. We also cannot recover storage soldered onto a motherboard, such as in Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops. Only drives that can be removed from a machine and sent to us can be recovered. If you are unsure whether your device has a removable drive, please call us before sending. RAID, server and SAN drives need to be removed from their enclosure and labelled by bay. For a NAS, send the disks themselves if they are removable, otherwise the entire NAS device. An external single drive should come to us whole, along with its cable and power supply.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Please mark the package for the attention of Guildford Data Recovery, and we will call you as soon as we have diagnosed your media.
Unsure as to how to proceed with sending the item in for recovery? Then simply call 0800 689 0668, or complete the free online diagnostic prior to dispatching the item to obtain your price quotation.
The diagnostic's on us and the quote won't move. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or ring the freephone.