Most data jobs aren’t lost causes — they’re just inconvenient. New phone day. Hard drive that won’t boot. USB stick that snapped in half. We do three different things depending on what state your old device is in. Find your situation below.
A device that still works needs an afternoon. A drowned phone is a week of bench work. Pick the right one and the price makes sense.
Your old device still works. You just want everything on the new one.
PC→PC
Mac→MacPC→MacMac→PCiOS→iOS
Android→AndroidiOS→AndroidAndroid→iOSPlus: broken HDDs, snapped USB sticks, dead SSDs.
Modern phones & laptops have storage soldered directly onto the logic board. There’s no ‘take the drive out’ option — recovery means rescuing the existing board, transplanting storage chips, or chip-off NAND reads under the microscope.
We open it, identify what’s actually wrong, and quote in writing. If we can’t recover, you pay only the $65 — never more.
Smashed screen, won’t boot, OS corrupt — but the drive itself is fine.
If your storage is a 2.5″ HDD, SATA SSD, or M.2 module that lifts out of the chassis, this is the easy path. We pull it, put it in an enclosure (or reinstall the OS around your files), and hand it back.
Drive lifted, sealed into enclosure, plug-and-play on any computer. Enclosure case from $30.
We save your files, reinstall Windows / macOS, put your stuff back. Programs you’ll reinstall yourself.
Both devices, both chargers, and the Apple ID / Google account passwords for the new device. (We never need your old device’s passcode — you stay signed in to it the whole time.)
You bought the new device. The old one still works. You don’t want to spend Saturday signing in and out of fourteen apps. Drop both off and walk away — most transfers are done inside two hours.
We’ll move photos, videos, contacts, messages, calendar, notes, mail accounts and Wi-Fi between any combination of iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows. Apps that exist on both platforms get re-installed automatically; everything else we’ll talk you through.
Modern device security is good. Really good. The same encryption that protects your phone from a thief also protects it from us. Here’s where we have to be straight with you.
If you can’t unlock the device because you’ve forgotten the PIN, password, or pattern — on iPhone, iPad, or any modern Android — the storage is encrypted with that code. There is no back door. We can’t bypass it. No one can.
What we CAN do: reset the device to factory settings so you can use it again. Phone wipes for $45, including disabling Find My / Activation Lock screens. Your data on it is gone in this case.
After too many wrong passcode attempts iPhones go to a permanently-disabled screen. Same situation as a forgotten passcode — the data inside is encrypted and unreachable without the original code.
What we CAN do: erase & reset the iPhone so it’s usable again. $45.
If the iPhone is signed in to an Apple ID and you can’t remember the password, only Apple can remove that lock — and only after you prove ownership directly with them. We physically cannot do it. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling you stolen-phone services we don’t do.
What we’ll do: walk you through the Apple ID recovery process and what proof of purchase they’ll need.
If the NAND flash chip itself is physically split, scorched, or has had a current arced through it, the data is gone at the silicon level. This is rare — almost all ‘dead’ devices still have intact storage — but it does happen, particularly with serious water + power events.
What we’ll do: tell you straight away — no fee. If we can see it’s cooked at intake, you walk out with the bad news for free.
Phones, tablets, modern MacBooks, recent thin Windows laptops — they all have storage that’s soldered onto the logic board. There’s no ‘take the drive out’ option. Recovery means rescuing the device far enough to read its storage, transplanting the storage chip onto a working donor board, or chip-off reads under the microscope. Specialist gear, specialist hands, real time.
Most cases involve multiple issues stacking on top of each other — a phone that fell in water and now also won’t turn on, a MacBook with both a fried charging IC and a corroded display connector. We have to fix enough to power the storage and read it. That’s why this work takes one to seven days.
Many laptops — especially anything more than 4 or 5 years old, and most desktop PCs — still have storage that lifts out as a unit. Smashed screen? Cooked motherboard? Spilled coffee on the keyboard? Doesn’t matter. We pull the drive out of the dead machine and your data’s already saved.
When recovery succeeds, you get a copy of everything that was on the storage — same folder structure, same filenames. We hand it to you on an external drive or as a folder on your new device.
Full camera roll, hidden albums, screen recordings, RAW originals
iMessage / SMS history, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram
Address book with photos, calendars from every account
Apple Notes, Samsung Notes, Voice Memos, Bear, Obsidian
Word, Pages, Excel, Numbers, PDF, the lot — same folders
Safari, Chrome, Firefox: bookmarks, passwords with master pwd
Apple Mail / Outlook local stores, account configs (you re-sign-in)
Health, Wallet, Garmin, Strava, third-party app saves
If it's a transfer, we do both in one visit — most done same-day. If it's a recovery, the $65 exam is paid up front and refunded if we can't get your data.
If your situation falls between the paths or you're not sure which applies, walk in. We'll work out which path in 5 minutes.
Bring it in — we'll work out which path applies in five minutes. Common middle case: a laptop where the drive is soldered (Path 2) but a portion is recoverable cheaply (treated like Path 3). We quote both options when that happens.
We respect your privacy and know the value of the trust you place in us. Casemonkey has been the local device specialist at DFO Uni Hill since 2013, and our reputation rests entirely on the discretion we bring to every job. Recovery and transfer work naturally requires access to your files to move them, but our process is to touch only what's needed to verify the work has completed correctly — your photos, messages, and documents are never browsed beyond that. Any device or drive left with us for recycling is securely wiped before disposal.
Yes — for Apple ID recovery, we walk you through Apple's official process (you do the talking, we explain what they'll need). For Google, similar. We never bypass these — accounts you can prove ownership of, you can recover. Accounts you can't prove ownership of, no one can recover, and that's by design.
Sometimes. iPhone factory resets are cryptographic — when iOS wipes a phone it deletes the encryption key, making the data mathematically unrecoverable. Android phones older than ~2019 sometimes recover partially because the wipe wasn't always cryptographic. Bring it in for a free assessment.
Yes. $45 secure wipe on a working device (3-pass DoD-standard overwrite). For drives we can't pass through a secure wipe (already failed), we do physical destruction free of charge — punctured platter or NAND chip shattered, with a video receipt if you want one.
Bring it in — we'll check in 30 seconds. Anything 2019 or newer is usually soldered (Path 2). Anything older with a 2.5-inch drive bay is removable (Path 3). MacBook Air went soldered in 2018, MacBook Pro in 2016, most modern Windows ultrabooks since 2020. Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are soldered. Gaming laptops and ThinkPads often still have removable M.2.
Usually 3–5 days end-to-end. $65 exam happens in the first afternoon you drop it off. Quote within 24 hours. If you proceed, board-level work takes 2–4 days depending on the technique. Chip-off NAND reads can take a full week. We text you at every milestone.
Often, yes. The chip inside a USB stick is usually intact even when the plastic shell or USB connector snaps — we re-solder it onto a recovery board and read it. About 70% of snapped USB sticks recover their data. SD cards similar. Bring the broken pieces in (all of them, including any small bits).
