When a business is stopped or a deadline is fixed, priority handling is worth having — it moves your job to the front and keeps it there. What it cannot do is change how long a donor part takes to source or how fast a failing drive can safely be read. Here is where speed genuinely helps, and where it does not.
Emergency work jumps the queue onto the bench, and we keep you posted at every stage.
The fastest thing you can do costs nothing. Power the drive or system down, disconnect it, and don’t attempt further copies, scans or repairs — every one of those spends reads a failing drive may not have to give.
Genuinely urgent and merely stressful are different things, and it is worth being honest about which you have.
This is where a straight answer saves people money.
Priority handling moves your job to the front of the queue and keeps it there. What it does not do is change the physics. A drive needing a donor head-stack needs the right donor sourced, and if that part is two days away it is two days away whatever you pay. Imaging a failing disk takes as long as the disk allows — pushing it faster is precisely how recoverable data is lost, and we will not do it.
So the useful question is where the time actually goes in your particular case. On a logical fault with healthy hardware, priority handling can genuinely compress days into hours. On a mechanically failed drive it mostly removes the queue, which is worth something but is not the transformation people sometimes expect. We will tell you which at the diagnostic.
Ordered by how much difference each makes.
Especially if there is any unusual noise. A clicking drive deteriorates by the minute, and the single largest variable in the final outcome is how long it ran after the symptom appeared.
A backup or recovery scan on a failing drive is hours of exactly the wrong stress, and it frequently does not finish.
On a degraded RAID, a rebuild writes to the members and is the commonest way a recoverable array becomes an unrecoverable one.
A five-minute conversation establishes whether it is genuinely urgent, whether the device should travel at all, and what to send — which often saves a day by itself.
Faster to post, less to go astray, and quicker to start work on. Externals and NAS units are the exception and should come whole.
The same fixed-quote approach, with the turnaround agreed up front.
Standard work opens with a free 48-hour diagnostic, and typical turnaround from approval is three to four working days for a single drive. Priority handling shortens that and is quoted alongside the recovery itself, so you see both figures before committing — recovery from £300 +VAT for a single drive and from £500 +VAT for RAID, NAS and servers.
If the diagnostic shows that speed will not materially change your outcome, we will say so rather than take the premium. Hours 9am–5:30pm, Monday to Friday.
Post the device over for its free diagnostic with a short note on what happened; an engineer looks it over and puts your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
The road to your data back starts with the device reaching us. Wrap it well, tuck your contact details inside, and send it along — after the free diagnostic runs, your exact price is confirmed in writing before anything begins.
Sending by post? We would point you to a tracked and insured service. Prefer to hand it over? Come by Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just pack the device as above beforehand.
After a little more detail up front? Tell us more about the problem on the form and an engineer will review it and send back a tailored quote.
A reply will follow shortly. Anything urgent, call 01865 593000.
The queries that come up most when the clock is against you.
Genuinely urgent cases are a stopped business, a fixed external deadline, or a situation where data is still being overwritten — CCTV looping, or a system still writing to the volume. A drive sitting safely in a drawer is distressing but not deteriorating, and standard handling serves it better.
It removes the queue, which on a logical fault with healthy hardware can compress days into hours. It cannot change physics: sourcing a donor head-stack takes as long as it takes, and imaging a failing drive can only run as fast as the drive tolerates — pushing that is how data is lost.
Power the device down and leave it off, particularly if it is making any unusual noise. The largest variable in the final outcome is usually how long a failing drive kept running after the first symptom, and that one is entirely within your control.
Not if it is making noise. A backup from a mechanically failing drive is hours of sustained reading — the exact stress that widens the damage — and it frequently fails partway. Have it assessed instead of spending the remaining reads on a copy that may not complete.
The diagnostic is free and normally back within 48 hours, with typical turnaround from approval of three to four working days for a single drive. Priority handling shortens that and is quoted alongside the recovery so you see both figures before deciding.
Recovery itself is from £300 plus VAT for a single drive and from £500 plus VAT for RAID, NAS and servers, with priority handling quoted alongside it. If speed won’t materially change your outcome, we’ll tell you rather than charge the premium.
Tell us what has happened and we will get your emergency job onto the bench as a priority — a clear plan and a written quote before any work starts.