The coast is further from Leeds than most of Yorkshire — which is exactly why insured post exists. Scarborough’s tourism businesses, independent firms and households send drives down the line and have them looked at the next morning.
Insured post from anywhere in Yorkshire, or bring it to our Leeds drop-off at The Pinnacle on Albion Street — the diagnostic costs nothing either way.
Scarborough is a couple of hours from Leeds, so hand-delivery is a real journey — and almost nobody makes it. An insured, tracked parcel is with us the next morning and costs a fraction of the fuel. The coastal caseload leans towards hospitality and independent business servers and NAS boxes, plus a notable volume of photography: memory cards from cameras and drones, and external drives holding entire photographs archives.
Posting a drive does not put you at the back of the queue or the top of the price list. The diagnostic is free, the quote is fixed in writing, the engineers are our own, and the terms are identical — the only difference is a day of transit at each end.
Immobilise it in padding inside a snug box so nothing rattles, use anti-static material if you have it, and send it tracked and insured. A failed drive survives an ordinary journey perfectly well — what it cannot afford is tumbling loose inside an under-filled parcel.
Not a penny. The price is set by the device and the fault, never by where it was posted from. A drive from Scarborough is quoted on exactly the same basis as one carried in off Albion Street.
Usually not. That message almost always means a corrupt file system rather than lost images — the photos are still there. Do not let it format. Take the card out, stop shooting, and send it in; we image it and rebuild or carve the pictures back from the copy.