Desktop computers (home towers, office workstations and all-in-ones): when your desktop will no longer boot or one of the drives inside has failed, we will help you get your data back. Get a quote first, then pull out the failing drive and post it to us from anywhere in Sheffield.
Free diagnostic on every desktop computer job. We offer one fixed quote in writing before starting any work.
On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. For electronic, mechanical and chip-level work, we'll take half up front and the rest only if we're able to recover your data. Jobs involving BitLocker, ransomware, forensic or CCTV/DVR work are paid upfront once you accept the fixed quote. Complete pricing can be found on the data recovery cost page.
Every desktop computer job begins by matching the symptoms to the fault, and the following ten faults cover just about everything that makes it onto our bench.
A faulty hard drive or corrupted Windows files: either way, we get your files off the drive.
You've got a mechanical failure going on; shut down now and do not try to restart the computer.
Cheap PSUs and thunderstorms can kill the drive's electronics; once we repair the PCB and transfer the ROM chip, you'll have access to those files again.
Your disk has dropped off the bus: something (the electronics, the firmware or the connection) has failed.
Old files typically remain intact underneath, and the sooner the computer stops being used, the more of them will come back.
Files emptied from the recycle bin, or removed with Shift-Delete, can be recovered unless they've been overwritten.
Bad sectors on the hard drive will lock up the entire machine, but imaging hardware lets us read around the damage.
Infected computers can be recovered by imaging the drive and then extracting clean files; please refer to our ransomware guide for details.
With a striped pair there is twice as much that can fail, so both drives have their images taken before any reassembly.
IDE and SCSI drives from older, retired systems are no problem, as the adapters are already in our inventory.
A desktop makes access easy: simply slide out the drive and the recovery follows the same process as any other hard disk or SSD job. All-in-one computers (such as a family PC with a touchscreen) are more like laptops inside, but we still need only the drive, not the whole machine. For workstations running two separate drives or a RAID set up on the motherboard, please tell us about your system's configuration when you get in touch, so that the drives are imaged and reassembled in the right order.
A surprisingly frequent one: a shop, or a well-meaning family member, reinstalls Windows to fix a problem, and the documents folder goes along with it. In many cases those older files remain on the disk beneath the newer installation, and the sooner the machine stops being used, the more we can carve back out.
Desktop jobs get the complete set of hard drive and SSD tools, in addition to the legacy shelf:
Firmware-level access to the drive inside, regardless of how old it is or which interface it uses.
Unstable desktop drives are read out sector by sector, with hardware-level retry control.
Clicking desktop drives get head swaps using matched donor heads on the head-swap bench.
Adapters for IDE/PATA, SCSI and older SATA mean twenty years' worth of retired family PCs can still be read.
The drive you send us is first copied in full onto our hardware imagers, so recovery always runs on a copy and your original is never put under stress.
Your originals are always imaged read-only before being analysed, every time.
You might have an office fleet with many computers, a high-performance gaming system, a family tower that has been quietly holding everything since 2011, or one of those all-in-one units that hide a laptop's insides behind a desktop screen.
Packard Bell iMedia towers were sold in massive quantities to UK homes, and their drives now reach us in one of two ways: removed from a unit that finally refused to start, or bare, having been pulled from a tower that was scrapped years ago and then kept in a drawer "just in case". The most common self-inflicted loss happens when someone runs a factory restore on a slow computer to get it running faster, laying a fresh copy of Windows over the top of years of pictures. The old files usually remain buried underneath and can be recovered from a full sector image of the original hard drive. Ageing IDE and early SATA drives get the legacy adapters and the gentle, patient imaging their age demands.
A constant flow of hard drives reaches this bench from Pavilion towers in home studies and from EliteDesk and OptiPlex machines in office fleets. Decommissioned office stock seems to follow its own set of rules. OptiPlex drives get put into storage during an office clear-out, then rediscovered when someone suddenly needs the old accounts or drawings stored on them, and by then years of sitting idle have left the drives reluctant to spin. Home computers more often come in after a storm surge has taken out the power supply unit and the drive electronics together, or when Windows sticks at its logo because the disk is full of bad sectors. Whatever the cause, the drive alone is all we need you to post. We'll image it first, fix what needs fixing, and return the recovered data to you on new media.
Get a quote first with the free online diagnostic or by phone, then remove the drive from your computer before sending it to us. Unsure? Call 0800 689 0668 for help, or have a local PC repair shop remove the drive for a small charge.
Slide the drive out and send just the drive (typically two screws, a SATA cable and a power cable inside the tower). We do not provide a drive-removal service, so please open the tower yourself; it keeps your postage costs down and your PC at home.
Our customers get a quote first, before sending their media to us, either by telephone on 0800 689 0668 or by completing our free online diagnostic. Once a customer has their quote, they post their media to us, tracked and insured.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the hard drive or SSD from your machine and send us just the drive; we do not offer an internal drive-removal service. If you have a server or RAID system, please send us every disk, each clearly labelled with its bay. We cannot recover data from storage that is soldered directly onto the motherboard (for example Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops), so we need removable drives to be sent to us. If you are unsure which kind you have, ring us first.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark your package for the attention of Leeds Data Recovery and we will contact you as soon as we have diagnosed your media.
Unsure about what to send? Call us first on 0800 689 0668 or complete our free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote and, in most cases, you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.