The courier network is our branch network. Wherever you are in the UK, a tracked box gets your failed drive, SSD, RAID set, NAS disks, memory card or laptop onto the Bristol bench — where it’s diagnosed free within 48 hours and quoted in writing before a single job begins.
What decides a recovery is the equipment and the engineer, not the mileage. A next-day service puts every UK postcode one box away from both.
Everything starts with where to send it — so here it is, up front.
Address your parcel to Bristol Data Recovery, Castlemead, Lower Castlemead, Bristol BS1 3AG, using any tracked and insured courier or Royal Mail service. Inside the box, add a note with your name, postal address, email and phone number — or print our shipping form and enclose that instead. That note is what books your device in the moment it arrives.
Leave caddies, cables and power supplies at home unless the fault involves them: for external drives the whole enclosure is useful, but bare drives, cards and sticks need nothing else.
Sixty seconds of care here removes all the transit risk.
Single drives and SSDs want a rigid box and packing that stops all movement — bubble wrap around the drive, filler around the wrap. RAID and NAS disks should each carry their bay or slot number and be separated so they can’t contact each other; the chassis and controller can usually stay with you. Cards and USB sticks travel happily taped to a piece of card inside a padded envelope; a snapped stick should have both halves bagged together. And a water-damaged drive breaks the usual rule: seal it in a bag while it’s still damp, because drying out is what starts the corrosion.
You approve everything before anything happens.
On arrival your device is logged and goes straight into the diagnostic queue — assessed free within 48 hours. You then get a written quote covering what failed, what’s recoverable and the exact cost, with no fix, no fee applying to most jobs. Physical drive-level repairs such as head swaps and board rebuilds take a 50% deposit that goes toward donor parts and bench time, with the remainder due only when your data is recovered. Once complete, your files are returned on new media, with the return arrangements agreed as part of your quote.
And if you’re wondering whether posting beats finding somewhere closer: a good deal of ‘local’ recovery is already postal — many shops that take a drive over the counter forward it to a specialist lab behind the scenes. Sending it to the lab yourself just shortens the chain.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Recovering your data starts with getting the device to us. Pack it safely, add your contact details, and send it over — after we run a free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work begins.
Posting it in? We recommend a tracked, insured service. Prefer to drop it off? You’re welcome Monday–Friday, 9am–5:30pm — please still package the device as above.
If you need more information on our data recovery service, fill out the form with more detail about your issue and an engineer will review it and give you a custom quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 0117 332 1137.
Less than it sounds. With the power off, a drive’s read heads sit parked away from the platters, so ordinary transit knocks don’t touch the data surfaces. Immobilise it in a stiff box, book a tracked and insured service, and it arrives in the same state it left — drives reach our Bristol lab this way every working day.
Your free diagnostic is completed within 48 hours of the device arriving, and the written quote that follows includes a timescale for the recovery itself. Single drives usually turn around in days; RAID sets and servers take longer, and genuinely urgent jobs can be flagged when you get in touch.
Distance changes nothing. Memory cards and USB sticks are £250 + VAT, single drives — internal, external, laptop or Mac — are £300 + VAT, and multi-disk RAID, NAS and server work is quoted after the free diagnostic. The full breakdown lives on our pricing page.
Of course — if you’re local, bring it to Castlemead in Bristol any weekday between 9am and 5:30pm. The postal route exists for everyone who isn’t: same bench, same engineers, same prices, whichever way your device arrives.
Pack it today, and you’ll have a free written diagnostic within 48 hours of it reaching Bristol — with nothing to pay until you approve.