Inverurie commutes, builds things and keeps good records, and none of that survives a dead drive. Post it tracked, let it be read properly, and get a price in writing before anybody touches it.
Inverurie jobs are diagnosed free. One fixed figure in writing before any work, and no fix no fee on the bulk of recoveries.
AB51 is a mixed bag and the parcels show it. Drawings, models and job files from the fabrication and engineering firms on the Inverurie and Port Elphinstone estates, a good many of them working to the energy sector's deadlines. Agricultural and livestock records from the farms and from the trade around Thainstone. Small-practice servers and NAS boxes belonging to professional firms in town. Home-office machines owned by people who are in Aberdeen three days a week and in the box room for the rest. And, as everywhere, the household external that quietly stopped mounting one evening with every photograph of the children on it.
What turns up is generally one of four things. A drive making a noise it did not used to make, which is mechanical and must be switched off immediately. A drive that powers but is never detected, which is normally firmware, service area or board. A volume that mounts and then reads as RAW or empty, which is a file system fault and the most recoverable category there is. Or an SSD that vanished mid-session, where the controller has lost the mapping while the flash behind it is perfectly intact. The correct response to all four is identical: stop using it, and stop pointing repair tools at it.
Send the bare drive or SSD tracked and insured from Inverurie and it reaches the bench the following working day. Your own courier account is equally acceptable and remains your booking and your charge. 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 the Garioch or from anywhere else, so no van will appear and nobody needs to wait in for one.
Diagnosis costs nothing, finishes within 2 working days of the box arriving, then hands you one fixed written figure plus an honest view of what will come back. Logical faults are no fix, no fee. Damage that is mechanical, electrical, water or fire takes half the quote before the work begins, the balance owed only on success. Forensic-classed jobs — ransomware, CCTV and DVR recorders, BitLocker volumes — are settled in full in advance, and the ransom is never paid. Phones and tablets are outside our intake, and so is any storage soldered to a motherboard — if the drive will not come out of the machine, we cannot take the machine instead. Kintore, Kemnay, Oldmeldrum, Insch, Blackburn, Pitcaple and the villages under Bennachie all use the same terms. 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.