Dead on arrival, stuck in a boot loop, dropped down the stairs or introduced to a cup of coffee — whatever shape the laptop is in, the data inside is usually still recoverable. We work on every make and model, from Staines student machines to business fleets across Surrey.
Free diagnostic on every laptop job. One fixed quote in writing before any work begins.
No fix, no fee all jobs except electronic and mechanical failures, chip level work, DVR and Forensic jobs. Full pricing is on the data recovery cost page.
Every laptop job starts by matching the symptoms to the fault — these twelve cover almost everything that reaches the bench.
A dead motherboard, charging fault or shorted rail stops the laptop — but the drive inside it almost never cares.
Drinks go straight for the logic board, and corrosion does the real damage — moving fast is what saves the data.
Impact killed the hard drive's heads; a matched donor head swap under clean airflow is the well-worn fix.
Whether it's the storage failing or Windows corrupting, the answer is the same: the data is read off the bare drive.
An update that dies halfway leaves a machine that won't start over documents that are perfectly fine.
When the M.2 stick or SSD in a modern laptop fails, the whole machine simply stops, without warning.
Blocked cooling slowly bakes the drive over months; we get the data off before the heat finishes the job.
The laptop hums along behind a black panel — the drive comes out and the files come off, quickly.
A well-meaning 'repair' reinstall flattens user profiles; whatever it didn't overwrite is what we bring back.
Bring the key or password and encryption is no obstacle at all — just tell us it's encrypted when you get in touch.
Older Fujitsu Lifebook and HP Pavilion drives develop firmware and bad-sector faults that stall the whole machine at boot.
Vintage Packard Bell and early laptops run PATA drives that seize or lose their PCB — recovered on the legacy bench.
Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, MSI, Microsoft Surface — and everything in between. Inside, your data almost always lives on a 2.5" hard drive or an M.2 SSD that comes out from a base panel with a few screws; remove the drive or SSD yourself and send us just that, as we don't run a drive-removal service. A number of thin ultrabooks and Surface models have their storage soldered to the motherboard: we no longer recover soldered storage, only drives that can be removed and posted to us. If you're unsure which camp yours falls into, call us first on 0800 689 0668 and we'll talk it through.
A fall can wreck the hard drive's heads while the laptop itself still looks fine — if it now clicks, whirs or hangs at boot, switch it off and keep it off. Liquid damage is a race against corrosion: skip the bag of rice, stop trying to power it on, and simply get it to us quickly. We strip out the storage, treat whatever needs treating, and recover straight from the drive.
A laptop can hide any storage format made in the last twenty years, so this bench keeps the whole stack ready:
From the moment your posted drive or SSD arrives it's logged, kept in anti-static handling, and fully imaged before recovery begins.
Whatever came out of the laptop attaches natively — M.2 NVMe or SATA, mSATA, 2230/2242 formats, Apple's own blades, even vintage IDE.
A failed laptop drive is treated exactly like any bare drive, with full firmware-level access on the appropriate rig.
When a dropped laptop needs a head swap, it happens under filtered air with donor parts pulled from the library.
Drives that met a spilled drink are ultrasonically cleaned and treated for corrosion until they'll sit still for imaging.
Nothing touches an extracted drive until it has been imaged through a write-blocker.
Sealed-battery ultrabooks, gaming machines with dual drives, and ten-year-old family laptops alike — if it closes with a hinge, we've had one apart. Older Fujitsu Lifebook and HP Pavilion drives are frequent visitors with firmware and bad-sector faults that stall the machine at boot; vintage Packard Bell laptops run ageing PATA/SATA disks with tired motors; and modern HP and Dell ultrabooks tend to fail suddenly when their single NVMe stick gives out. We recover removable drives only — storage soldered to the board can't be lifted off.
Sony left the laptop market in 2014 and Vaio support ended with it, but the machines themselves refuse to disappear — barely a week passes without a Vaio drive in the post, usually from a laptop rediscovered during a clear-out. Nearly every model in the range, from the ultraportable TZ and P series to the big desktop-replacement F series, carries a standard 2.5-inch drive that is simple to take out and send. After years in a drawer the mechanics can need persuasion in the clean bench before they will read, but age alone doesn't put a Vaio drive beyond recovery.
Toshiba Satellites were the default British laptop for the best part of two decades, and the 2.5-inch drives inside them earned a reputation for head trouble — a Satellite that crawls, freezes mid-task or ticks quietly under load is showing the familiar signs. The fix is well-trodden: a replacement head assembly from donor stock, then patient imaging that leaves the worst-affected regions until last. Early PATA Satellites and later SATA models both come through the same process once the drive is out.
Acer Aspires and Asus VivoBooks own the budget end of the market, which often makes them a household's only computer — so when one stops booting, everything from coursework to the tax records is suddenly out of reach. Most recent models boot from a small M.2 SSD, and unlike a spinning drive it gives no warning sound before it fails; the laptop simply reports that no operating system can be found. On almost all of them the SSD or hard drive unplugs easily and recovery proceeds from there — the exception being a handful of the very cheapest models with storage soldered to the motherboard, which we can't take on.
Before anything goes in the post, the drive has to come out of your computer — we work on the bare drive only. Not sure how? Ring us on 0800 689 0668, or any local PC repair shop will take it out for a small fee.
Take the drive out before you post anything — drive removal isn't a service we offer. In most laptops a single base panel hides the 2.5-inch drive or M.2 SSD, and a few screws free it. Send the bare drive on its own, wrapped in foil or an anti-static bag. Where a laptop's storage is soldered to the motherboard we can't take the job on: only drives that can be removed and posted in are recoverable here.
Most customers post their media to us tracked and insured.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive — we don't provide an internal drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) — only drives that can be removed and sent to us.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark the package for the attention of Guildford Data Recovery and we'll call you as soon as we diagnose your media.
Not sure what to send? Call 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee — start now or call the freephone.