There are countless reasons why a laptop will not turn on: it may be stuck in a boot loop, it may have fallen down the stairs or had a cup of coffee spilled on it. In most cases, however, the damage does not affect the data stored internally, so this data can usually be recovered. Our company provides services for virtually every make and model available today, including business fleets and students attending colleges and universities in Sheffield.
Free diagnostic on every laptop job. Before we begin any work on your laptop, we will give you one fixed quote in writing.
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 laptop job starts with us figuring out what the symptoms point to and where the fault lies. Ten faults cover almost everything that reaches our bench:
The logic board is dead, or there's a charging fault or a shorted rail, but in most cases the storage inside will still be fine.
Tea and coffee will head straight for your logic board; corrosion is your biggest enemy, and speed is the best medicine.
If the laptop was dropped and the hard drive's heads failed on impact, this is a classic head-swap bench job.
Either the storage is failing or Windows is corrupt. In both cases we can recover the data directly from the hard drive or SSD.
An update has gone wrong halfway and your laptop won't start. Your documents are safe underneath because the update never touched them.
Most modern laptops use an NVMe stick or SSD, and when these fail, your laptop dies suddenly.
Over time, dust builds up in your laptop's cooling, causing the hard drive to overheat. We can extract the data before it completely fails.
The laptop still runs but the display is dead, so the drive comes out and we extract the data from the hard drive or SSD. It's a quick, simple procedure.
If someone tries to 'fix' your laptop with a 'repair install', it will wipe your user profiles. Our recovery works from whatever the reinstall didn't overwrite.
If your laptop is protected with BitLocker or another form of encryption, please let us know when calling us. In addition to knowing how the files were protected, we also need the encryption key or password. This way we can get started on accessing your data.
We recover data from nearly all brands and models of laptop, such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, MSI, Microsoft Surface and almost any other laptop brand. Data is usually stored on either a 2.5" hard drive or an M.2 solid state drive. These can be removed from a laptop once a few screws have been taken out and the base panel lifted off. Just get a quote first over the phone on 0800 689 0668 or use the free online diagnostic. Then remove the drive yourself and post just the drive to us, as we don't provide a drive removal service. Some very thin ultrabooks and Surface models have their storage soldered onto the motherboard. We don't recover soldered storage, only removable drives that you can post to us. If you are unsure whether your laptop stores its data on a removable drive or not, give us a call on 0800 689 0668 before sending anything to us.
A drop can fail the heads on an internal hard disk while the laptop itself appears fine. If the laptop now clicks, whirs or hangs at boot-up, power it down immediately and do not turn it on again. Liquid damage is a race against corrosion: don't put your laptop in rice and don't keep trying to turn it on, just get a quote first by phone on 0800 689 0668 or with our free online diagnostic, then remove the drive and get just the hard disk or SSD to us quickly. We treat what's needed, and recover from the drive directly.
Laptop work covers all types of storage, so the bench has everything plus the teardown kit:
Each drive or SSD sent in is logged and handled anti-statically once received, then imaged before any recovery takes place.
M.2 NVMe and SATA, mSATA, 2230 and 2242, proprietary Apple blades and vintage IDE: native attachment for whatever is inside.
Failed laptop drives receive the same firmware-level treatment as any bare drive.
Dropped-laptop head swaps happen on the head-swap bench using 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 are imaged through a write-blocker 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.
We frequently hear from customers with older Fujitsu Lifebooks, whether from office fleets being retired or the old Amilo home range, often found in a cupboard by someone who wants the data back. Many of these computers were discontinued years ago and are no longer sold in the UK, and they usually still have ten or more years of documents on board. When working with older systems like these (most often 2.5 inch drives), we expect to encounter problems related to ageing hardware (e.g. firmware hangs, a growing number of bad sectors and heads that read more slowly). However, once you physically remove the drive from the host system, recovering data from it is standard mechanical work: imaging around known weak spots first and replacing failed heads with donor heads. Get a quote first by phone on 0800 689 0668 or with the free online diagnostic, then slide the drive out and post it to us; the Lifebook or Amilo itself can stay at home.
Recent Asus VivoBooks and ZenBooks carry Windows on an M.2 SSD, and when that SSD dies it goes silent: after a single restart the laptop is looking for a boot device while your files remain intact in the NAND, awaiting a service-mode or chip-level read. Toshiba's Satellite generation fails the older way: the heads wear on the 2.5-inch hard drive, reads slow down, and eventually the laptop hangs at the splash screen or ticks quietly and won't start. Either way the outcome is 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.
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.
We do not offer a drive-removal service, so please take the drive out before sending. On most laptops the 2.5-inch drive or M.2 SSD will be hidden behind one main base panel, held in place by a few screws. First call for a quote on 0800 689 0668 or use our free online diagnostic. Then take the drive out and post just the drive to us, wrapped in an anti-static bag or tin foil. Note that if the storage is soldered to the motherboard, we cannot assist, as we only recover drives that can be removed and posted to us. If you're unsure about what type you have, please ring us first.
Our customers get a quote 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.
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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.