Yardley and Newtown are commuter towns, and it shows in the drives that reach us. The laptop that fails is usually one machine doing two jobs — employer files and family photographs, a client deliverable and eleven years of holidays, a home office that is genuinely the office three days a week. The person holding it isn’t near an IT department, and the deadline belongs to somebody else.

Say that on the first call, because it changes who needs to be involved rather than what we do. If the machine belongs to an employer, tell their IT team before anything else — on a managed device the decisions aren’t entirely yours, and if the volume is encrypted they hold the recovery key. Starting that conversation early costs nothing and it is regularly what decides whether a recovery is usable.

On our side it’s straightforward. We sign NDAs and BAAs upon request, keep a documented chain of custody from intake to return, and securely erase recovered data two weeks after completion unless you arrange otherwise in writing. We don’t separate, review or forward anything — what’s on the drive comes back to you, and nothing gets shipped to a third party exposing your data to the risks. And if the device might become part of an employment or legal matter, say so, because that changes how we image it and the decision can’t be made afterwards.