Ellon is a working town on the Ythan with a lot of commuters and a brewery, and hardly any of them keep proper backups. Post the drive tracked. Diagnosis costs nothing and the price is fixed in writing.
Ellon jobs are diagnosed free. One fixed figure in writing before any work, and no fix no fee on the bulk of recoveries.
AB41 work divides between the commute and the town. A good share of Ellon travels to Aberdeen, Westhill or Peterhead to work, which means laptops and portable drives carrying project files that exist in exactly one place. The town supplies the rest: production and quality data from the brewing and food businesses, farm records from Formartine, small-practice servers, shop and hospitality tills, and the golf and holiday trade along the coast at Newburgh and Cruden Bay. Households make up the balance, usually with a single external asked to hold everything since about 2010.
The failures are predictable and so is the right answer to them. A drive that has developed a click, tick or beep has a mechanical fault and must be switched off at once. A drive that lights up but is never detected has a firmware, service-area or board fault and gets read directly on equipment that speaks to it below the USB layer. A volume that mounts but shows RAW, empty folders or a request to format has a file system fault, and those are the most recoverable jobs on the bench provided nothing writes to the disk meanwhile. Repair tools, chkdsk and initialise prompts are how recoverable jobs become partial ones.
Getting it here is straightforward. Bare drive out where you can, packed so it cannot move, tracked and insured post from Ellon — on the bench the following working day. Your own courier is equally acceptable and remains your booking and your bill. In person, the counter is Edinburgh Data Recovery, 4 Redheughs Rigg, Westpoint, South Gyle, Edinburgh EH12 9DQ, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. Nothing is fetched from Ellon or anywhere else, so there is nothing to wait in for.
Money is settled before the work, not after it. Diagnosis is free, closes inside 2 working days of arrival, and yields a single fixed written figure. Logical faults carry no fix, no fee. Impact, electrical, water and fire damage need 50% of the quote before the clean-air or board stage, the balance only on success. Forensic-classed jobs — ransomware, CCTV and DVR recorders, BitLocker — are paid in full in advance, and the ransom itself is never paid on your behalf. No phones, no tablets, nothing soldered onto a motherboard. Balmedie, Newburgh, Methlick, Tarves, Pitmedden, Udny and Cruden Bay all post in identically. Freephone 0800 689 0668.
Nearly everything on this bench came by tracked, insured post. It is the safest way to shift a failing drive, and a parcel handed in at a North-East post office is usually here the next working day.
Still bolted into a laptop, desktop, MacBook, iMac, server or CCTV / DVR box? Get the hard drive or SSD out first. The bare drive travels on its own. Stripping machines down is not a job this lab takes on. Flash soldered to a motherboard, as on Apple Silicon Macs and a couple of very thin laptops, is our one flat no: if it will not unbolt, it cannot be worked on.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Address it for the attention of Edinburgh Data Recovery. From Aberdeen that is roughly 130 miles and two and a half hours down the A90, or next working day by tracked post if you would rather not make the run. You get a call the moment it is booked onto the bench.
Not sure what belongs in the box? Ring 0800 689 0668 before you tape it shut, or work through the free online diagnostic.
Free diagnosis, the figure written down, no fix no fee on most jobs. Online or on the phone.