A computer that won’t boot has two suspects: the machine around the drive, or the drive itself. The bench answers that question daily — for student laptops carrying dissertations, family PCs carrying two decades of photos, and everything Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer and their cousins have shipped to Scotland. Free diagnostic either way.
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No power at all usually means charger, battery or board — the drive is often a bystander with your data intact. Powers up but no operating system (‘boot device not found’, blinking cursor, endless repair loops) points at the drive: failing sectors where Windows lives, or a drive gone entirely. Blue screens and freezes that got gradually worse are the classic soundtrack of a dying laptop drive — the machine was warning you for weeks. Started after a spill or a drop? Different pages of the same book: liquid finds boards first, impacts find drives. Whichever fault yours is, the wrong move is reinstalling Windows ‘to see if it helps’ — a reinstall writes over the very files you want back.
If you’re comfortable removing a laptop or desktop drive, the bare drive travels lighter; if not, send or bring the whole machine — extraction here is careful and free. Modern thin laptops increasingly solder their storage to the motherboard, which moves the job to board level: for those, the whole machine isn’t optional, it’s the patient. (Apple hardware has its own page — Mac & MacBook recovery — because APFS and FileVault change the rules.) Either way, include what happened and what matters most; a recovery aimed at your priorities finishes faster where it counts.
Almost never gone — usually the drive has failed where the operating system lives while your documents and photos sit on healthier ground. Recovery images the drive, weak areas last, and lifts your files from the copy. The mistake to avoid: reinstalling Windows over them.
Very often yes. Liquid attacks the motherboard first; the drive or SSD frequently escapes. Power it off, don't charge it, don't rice it — bring it in. Even when the machine is a write-off, the storage inside usually isn't.
Yes — that's board-level work: repairing the machine enough to read the chips, or reading them directly. Odds vary with the damage and we'll be straight about them at the free diagnostic. Send the whole machine; with soldered storage, it is the drive.
A free diagnostic first, always — then a fixed written quote before any work begins. No surprises on the invoice, because there's no invoice until you've approved the number.
Getting a device onto this bench only takes two moves, and the clock on your free look starts the moment it lands.
Strip out cables, caddies and power bricks — none of it helps — wrap the device so it can't shift in transit, and either post it insured to 83 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH2 2ER or bring it in yourself. Tuck a note of what happened in with it, and enclose the shipping form if you've printed one.
Arrival gets confirmed, the diagnostic runs at no cost to you, and the call that follows names the fault and states a fixed price. The bench stays idle on your device until you say go.
£300 + VAT fixed, free diagnostic first — whatever brand, whatever’s inside it.