Westhill holds one of the densest clusters of subsea and engineering firms in Scotland, and their project data sits on hardware that fails like everyone else's. When it does, the drive posts south and gets read properly.
Westhill jobs are diagnosed free. One fixed figure in writing before any work, and no fix no fee on the bulk of recoveries.
AB32 sends work that tends to matter commercially. Survey and inspection datasets, ROV and sonar output, CAD models and tender packs from the subsea, engineering and consultancy firms on Arnhall and the parks around it. Project archives held on one portable drive because the file was too big for anywhere else. Small-office servers, NAS boxes and RAID sets belonging to firms of twenty people who never quite got round to testing the backup. And alongside it all, the domestic work of a commuter town: family externals, student laptops, cameras and cards.
Business jobs are handled the same way as any other, which is to say methodically. Every disk is imaged read-only behind a hardware write-blocker, so the original is never written to. RAID and NAS sets are reconstructed virtually from those images, never by returning the disks to the box and letting the controller have another attempt — that attempt is the commonest way a recoverable array becomes a partial one. If a volume has dropped, power the unit down and leave it down until somebody has looked at it. Send the member disks labelled in bay order, not the chassis.
The route in is post, courier or counter. Tracked and insured post from Westhill puts media on the bench the following working day. A courier on your own account does the same and stays your booking and your cost, which suits firms with procurement rules. In person the address is Edinburgh Data Recovery, 4 Redheughs Rigg, Westpoint, South Gyle, Edinburgh EH12 9DQ, open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, about two and a half hours down the A90. Nothing is picked up from offices or sites — no van, no courier at our expense, nothing to book.
Terms are identical for a subsea contractor and a household. The free assessment takes 2 working days at most from arrival, and out of it comes one fixed written figure including VAT. Logical faults run on no fix, no fee. Impact damage, electrical faults, water and fire take half the quote before the work, balance on a result. Ransomware, CCTV and DVR recorders and BitLocker volumes are forensic-classed and paid in full before an engineer starts; we do not pay ransoms and we do not negotiate with the people who wrote the malware. Phones and tablets are refused, as is storage soldered to a motherboard. Skene, Elrick, Kingswells, Echt, Dunecht and Kirkton of Skene work the same way as the rest of Scotland. 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.