Salt air, seasonal trade and more photographs per square mile than almost anywhere in Yorkshire — Scarborough's failed drives and cards come off the coast by tracked post and get a straight answer inside 2 working days.
Scarborough jobs are diagnosed free. One fixed written quote before any work starts — no fix, no fee on most recoveries.
Scarborough sends us the most photogenic failures in the county, and the hardest-working ones. The town photographs for a living — wedding shooters covering the castle headland and the Wolds venues inland, seascape and wildlife regulars working both bays, families filling cards on the front every summer — and cards that live in camera bags on this coast lead a harder life than most: salt in the air, drizzle on the kit, cold mornings, and a season's worth of insert-and-remove. Behind the cameras sits the seasonal economy — hotels and guesthouses with booking systems that mustn't fail in August, arcades and seafront businesses with tills and CCTV recorders, fishing and harbour trades with paperwork that lives on one ageing laptop — and behind all that, YO11 to YO13's households, with the same failed externals and dead laptops as anywhere else, plus a sea view.
None of it needs carrying anywhere. Wrap the drive or tape the card inside folded stiff card, post it tracked from any counter in town, and it reaches our Leeds location the next working day — Leeds Data Recovery, 17th Floor, The Pinnacle, Albion Street, Leeds LS1 5AA. There's no collection service to wait on — a machine that can't sit until the postbox is best run down the A64 yourself. Either way the free diagnostic is complete inside 2 working days of the parcel landing: fault named, honest odds, one fixed price in writing, your decision made with no pressure on it.
The terms are the same ones every town on this site gets, phrased once for the coast: purely logical work — corrupted cards, deleted folders, a drive that mounts but won't read — runs no fix, no fee. Anything that opens the hardware — a dropped drive's head swap, a salt-corroded board, water damage of any kind — takes half the quote upfront for the invasive stage, the rest only on success. Ransomware, CCTV and BitLocker are forensic-classed and settled upfront in full. We don't take phones or tablets, and storage soldered to a motherboard is outside the intake — one call to 0800 689 0668 sorts any doubt before you pack. Recovered work comes home on fresh media, tracked to your door.
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.