Won't switch on, stuck on a boot loop, dropped down the stairs or met a cup of coffee — whatever state the laptop is in, the data inside is usually recoverable. We work on every make and model, from Sheffield student machines to business fleets.
Free diagnostic on every laptop job. One fixed quote in writing before any work begins.
No fix, no fee all jobs except electronic and mechanical failures, chip level work, DVR and Forensic jobs. Full pricing is on the data recovery cost page.
Every laptop job starts by matching the symptoms to the fault — these ten cover almost everything that reaches the bench.
Dead board, charging fault or shorted rail — the storage inside is almost always unaffected.
Tea and coffee head for the logic board; corrosion is the enemy and speed is the cure.
The hard drive's heads failed on impact; classic clean-bench head-swap territory.
Failing storage or corrupted Windows — either way the data comes off the drive directly.
Update dies halfway and the machine won't start; documents are untouched underneath.
Modern laptops die suddenly when the NVMe stick or SSD inside them fails.
Dust-choked cooling cooks the drive over months — data comes off before the drive finishes dying.
Machine runs, display doesn't — drive-out extraction is quick and clean.
A 'repair' reinstall wipes profiles; recovery works from what the reinstall didn't overwrite.
With your key or password, encrypted storage recovers like any other — mention it when you call.
Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, MSI, Microsoft Surface and everything in between. Inside, your data usually lives on a 2.5" hard drive or an M.2 SSD that lifts out from a base panel with a few screws — remove the drive or SSD from the laptop yourself and send us just the drive, as we don't provide a drive-removal service. Some thin ultrabooks and Surface models have the storage soldered to the motherboard: we don't recover soldered storage anymore, only drives that can be removed and posted to us. If you're not sure which yours is, call us first on 0800 689 0668 and we'll advise.
A drop can fail the hard drive's heads while the laptop itself seems fine — if the machine now clicks, whirs or hangs at boot, power it off and keep it off. Liquid damage is a race against corrosion: don't put it in rice, don't keep trying to turn it on, just get it to us quickly. We strip the storage out, treat what's needed, and recover from the drive directly.
Laptop work spans every storage type, so the bench carries the full stack plus the teardown kit:
The drive or SSD you remove and send is logged and handled anti-statically from arrival, then imaged before any recovery work begins.
M.2 NVMe/SATA, mSATA, 2230/2242, proprietary Apple blades and vintage IDE — native attachment for whatever is inside.
Failed laptop drives get the same firmware-level treatment as any bare drive.
Dropped-laptop head swaps happen under filtered airflow with donor parts from the library.
Liquid-damaged removable drives and their connectors are cleaned and corrosion-treated so the drive can be imaged.
Extracted drives image through write-blockers before anything else touches them.
Sealed-battery ultrabooks, gaming machines with dual drives, and ten-year-old family laptops alike — if it closes with a hinge, we've had one apart.
Fujitsu Lifebooks from office fleets and the older Amilo home range keep surfacing years after the brand left UK shelves, usually retrieved from a cupboard with a decade of documents aboard. Their 2.5-inch drives show their age in the usual ways — firmware hangs, creeping bad sectors and heads that read a little slower every month — and once the drive is out of the machine, recovery is standard mechanical work: imaged around the weak zones first, donor parts fitted if the heads have genuinely failed. Slide the drive out and pop it in the post; the Lifebook or Amilo itself can stay at home.
Recent Asus VivoBooks and ZenBooks carry Windows on an M.2 SSD, and when that stick dies there is nothing to hear — one restart and the machine is asking for a boot device while your files sit intact in the NAND, waiting for service-mode or chip-level reading. Toshiba's Satellite generation fails the older way: the 2.5-inch drives wear their heads, reads crawl, and eventually the laptop hangs at the splash screen or ticks quietly instead of booting. Both end the same — drive out, drive imaged, data returned — with the usual caveat that the very slimmest machines with soldered-down storage are the exception we have to turn away.
The drive needs to be removed from your computer before you send it in to us. Unsure? Phone us on 0800 689 0668, or a local PC repair shop will remove it for a small fee.
Please remove the drive before sending — we don't offer a drive-removal service. On most laptops the 2.5-inch drive or M.2 SSD sits behind a single base panel; a few screws and it lifts out. Post just the drive in an anti-static bag or wrapped in foil. If the storage is soldered to the motherboard we can't help — we only recover drives that can be removed and posted to us.
Most customers post their media to us, tracked and insured.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive — we don't provide an internal drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) — only drives that can be removed and sent to us.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark the package for the attention of Leeds Data Recovery and we'll call you as soon as we diagnose your media.
Not sure what to send? Call 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee — start now or call the freephone.