A marketing freelancer working from home in Bullbrook had a battery replaced in an Acer Swift. Part of the screen went black during the job and afterwards the machine would not start at all. The repair shop told her the data would be hard to get at because the storage is fixed to the motherboard. She rang here to ask what could be done. The answer was nothing, and she was told so on the phone rather than after the postage.
| Media | An Acer Swift ultrabook that will not start following a battery replacement, with its flash storage soldered directly to the mainboard rather than fitted as a removable module. |
| What was reported | Acer Swift laptop, battery replaced, part of the screen went black during the work, machine then would not start, repair shop advised the data is hard to retrieve because the storage is fixed to the motherboard, recovery enquiry made. |
| Fault class | Outside intake. The failure itself is unremarkable, but the storage on this model is soldered flat to the mainboard, and memory that cannot be unbolted from a machine is outside what this lab takes in. The enquiry was declined at that point and nothing was charged. |
| On the bench | None. The model was identified from the enquiry and its storage arrangement confirmed before anything was posted. No device was booked in, no diagnostic was carried out and no invoice was raised. |
This one is here because it was refused. Thirty-five of the files on this site describe work that was done. This is the one that describes work that was not, because a page of nothing but successes tells you less about a lab than a single honest no does.
The rule is about construction, not about difficulty. If the storage unbolts or unplugs, it is this lab's sort of work. Where the flash is soldered flat onto the mainboard, as it is on this model and on Apple Silicon machines and a good number of thin Windows ultrabooks, there is no unit to remove and no parcel to make up. That is a published limit, not a judgement made case by case.
The shop's account of it was accurate. They said the data would be hard to reach because the storage is fixed to the board, and that is exactly right. Where they stopped short was in not saying what follows from it, which is that the usual route of freeing the storage and posting it does not exist here.
Refusing at the enquiry is the cheapest possible outcome for the customer. The alternative is a parcel, a wait and a conversation that ends in the same place, minus the postage. She was given the position in the first phone call and pointed towards the repair route instead, since a machine that will not start after a battery swap is quite often a board that can be put right.
Nothing reached a bench. The model was identified from what she described, its storage arrangement was confirmed, and the enquiry was closed on the call.
What she was told instead: a laptop that stopped starting immediately after a battery replacement has often had something disturbed during the work, and the shop that did it is the right place to take that back to. If the machine can be made to start, the files are still there, because nothing in this story suggests the storage itself has failed. That is a repair job, and repair is a different trade from recovery.
No device was booked in, no diagnostic ran and no invoice was raised. She went back to the shop that had done the battery, which is where the problem started and where it was most likely to be solved.
For the avoidance of doubt about what is taken in: any single hard drive or SSD that can be removed from its machine is £300 + VAT, cards and USB sticks are £250 + VAT, and multi-disk sets are quoted from £500 + VAT. Storage soldered to a mainboard is outside all of those, and so are phones and tablets, which the shipping form excludes.
Check before you post anything. If your machine is an Apple Silicon Mac, or a thin Windows ultrabook of the kind that has no service hatch, the odds are that the flash is soldered to the board and there is no drive to send. Where that is the case, the realistic route is repair rather than recovery: get the machine working again and the files are still on it, because storage that has not failed does not lose anything just because the machine around it has. Be wary of anyone who offers to attempt this by post without asking what model it is. Ring first and describe the machine, and if the answer is no you will get it in the first minute rather than the second week.
These files are written up from genuine enquiries taken from households and businesses in Bracknell, across Berkshire and Surrey and into London, with names, firms and anything else identifying stripped out. Each one sets down how the fault was reasoned through, the method it actually needed and the equipment it was worked on. One of them is a job that was turned away, which belongs here as much as the rest of them.
A drive taken out and replaced can still be read as a data device once it is out of the machine it was failing in
Heads fly closer to the platter than a speck of dust is wide, so the drop does not have to be dramatic
When the machine, the cable and the caddy have all been eliminated, what is left is the drive itself
Examining it is free and takes 2 working days from arrival, the figure goes to you in writing and does not move afterwards, and a logical fault carries no fix, no fee. Start online or ring the freephone.