A city that has set the watch with a horn every night for eleven centuries understands keeping faith with a routine — and Ripon's failed drives get the same treatment: sent by post, examined on schedule, answered honestly.
Ripon jobs are diagnosed free. One fixed written quote before any work starts — no fix, no fee on most recoveries.
England's smallest cities punch above their weight in data, and Ripon proves it weekly. The cathedral, the racecourse and Fountains Abbey down the road keep a working population of photographers, events firms and heritage trades whose archives live on external drives and memory cards; the market square's independents and the small businesses off Kirkgate run tills, laptops and back-office machines that quit like anyone else's; and HG4's wide rural ring — from the Studley estate villages out to Masham, where the brewing is done properly — works from home offices and farm offices where one drive too often holds everything. When it fails, the answer isn't a drive to anywhere: it's a padded box and a tracked label.
Post the bare drive or card from Ripon and it's at our Leeds location the next working day — Leeds Data Recovery, 17th Floor, The Pinnacle, Albion Street, Leeds LS1 5AA — where reception also takes hand-ins Monday to Friday, 9am–5:30pm, for anyone heading to Leeds anyway. Business kit takes the same road: label the drives, box them properly, post them insured. The free diagnostic completes inside 2 working days of arrival, and what follows is a phone call an engineer would want to receive: the fault in plain words, the honest odds, and one fixed figure in writing that doesn't move afterwards.
The rules hold whether the parcel holds one SD card or a small server. Logical recoveries — deletion, corruption, unreadable-but-alive drives — run no fix, no fee. Mechanical, electrical, water or fire damage means the clean-air bench, and half the quote is paid upfront for that stage, the rest only when the data is proven back. Ransomware, CCTV and BitLocker jobs are forensic-classed and paid upfront in full — and on ransomware, hear the standing advice before anything else: never pay the ransom. No phones, no tablets, nothing soldered to a motherboard; 0800 689 0668 answers the borderline cases. Masham, Boroughbridge, Kirkby Malzeard and the HG4 villages post in on identical terms.
Nearly every job on our bench arrived by tracked, insured post — it's the quickest, safest route in. There's no collection service, so the parcel is yours to send or hand in.
Is the drive still inside a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Take the hard drive or SSD out first and post the bare drive on its own — removing drives from machines isn't a service we offer. Storage that's soldered to a motherboard (Apple Silicon Macs, certain slim laptops) is the one thing we can't work on: if it doesn't come out, it can't come in.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Address the parcel for the attention of Leeds Data Recovery — about 40 minutes from York via the A64 and A1(M), or next working day by tracked post. You'll hear from us the moment it's booked onto the bench.
Not certain what to pack? Ring 0800 689 0668 first, or run the free online diagnostic.
Free diagnosis, one fixed written figure, no fix no fee on most jobs — start online or ring the freephone.