How a job runs · phone, bench, post home
How data recovery works. Seven stages, and two of them wait until you say go.
No two parcels arrive alike, and yet the run never varies: seven stages, and always in that order, whatever the box holds. A telephone call opens it. Opening the media that comes back, and finding your folders where you expect them, closes it. Below is that order, and the two stages that wait on your word.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
The order it goes in, end to end.
A call, or the quote form
Telephone us, or fill the quote form in. Two answers do most of the work at this point. One: what was the machine busy with when it stopped. Two: which folders could you not manage without. Back comes a candid view of the chances, and exact instructions for packing, well before you tape the box shut.
Sending it to Guildford
Parcels come to the intake laboratory on Guildford Business Park, and the contact page sets the address out in full. Send it tracked and insured, printed form with it. A laptop, a desktop or a recorder should give up its drive first, and only the drive travels. A NAS can go as it stands. Out of a server or a RAID set, the disks come loose, each carrying its bay number.
Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free
Opening the parcel comes first, and a reference of its own is written against it there and then. After that the bench work begins: which part has actually given up, what the honest chance of reading those files is, and roughly how many hours it will take.
Yours to say yes or no
One figure comes to you in writing, and that figure does not move afterwards. Say yes and the bench work begins. Say no and the whole lot goes home to you along with what was found, with nothing at all to pay. Either way the diagnosis was free.
The work on the bench
Before a single repair is attempted, the media is copied sector by sector onto storage belonging to us. Everything after that — rebuilding an array, unlocking a volume, firmware work, fitting a donor head stack — is carried out against the copy, so what you posted is handed back in the condition it turned up in.
The file list comes first
No invoice exists until the whole list of what read back has been sent to you and you have had the chance to set it beside the folders you asked for.
Sent home by post
Whatever was recovered goes home on new media, and the postage is at our end. The working copies kept here are securely erased once thirty days have gone by. Your case stays open while you are still checking the contents.
How long each of them takes.
| Fault seen | What it takes | The time it runs |
|---|---|---|
| Logical: deletion, formatting, corruption | File system put back from the image | Typically 2–3 working days |
| Mechanical: clicks, knocks, no spin at all | Matched donor parts, then a patient read | 3–5 days at the bench |
| Multi-disk: RAID sets, NAS units, servers | Every member imaged, then the array assembled in software | 3–4 working days once it lands |
| Encrypted volumes, and court work | Agree the scope first; the timing follows from it | Written into the quote |
| When it truly cannot wait | A business unable to trade is put first, and so is a hearing or an audit with a date already on it | Say it when you ring |
What belongs in the box.
The questions that come up first.
Will I hear anything while it is on the bench?
You will. A message goes out as each stage below is completed. Between those, ring whenever you like — the phone is answered by an engineer, not by a ticket system that files your question and forgets it.
And if nothing at all can be read?
Then you are told so, plainly, and told so early rather than strung along for weeks. Where the files have genuinely gone, we say the word gone. Where another laboratory has the better chance on your particular fault, we give you its name and number. Bear in mind too that most jobs cost you nothing at all when the files do not come back.
Whose hands is the drive actually in?
Engineers employed here, working at a bench in the intake laboratory. Nothing is farmed out to a third party and nothing crosses a border. The parcel is given a case number the moment it is opened, and that number stays with your device right through to the day it is posted home.
How long are your copies of my data kept?
Thirty days, counted from the day your files land with you. Should you notice a gap in that time, ask and we go back over it. When the thirty days run out the working images here are securely erased and none of your material stays behind.
All of it begins with one telephone call.
One call, or the quote form, and the case is opened. The diagnosis costs nothing and it ties you to nothing.