WD6 · Borehamwood, Elstree and Well End
Data recovery for Borehamwood. A card offloaded once, unverified: usually the riskiest media in the workflow.
There are three working studio sites with three separate owners, all inside one Hertfordshire town, which is unusual anywhere in Europe. Elstree Studios on Shenley Road has been owned by Hertsmere Borough Council since the council purchased the site in February 1996 for £2m, and under a partnership announced in June 2025 it is operated by The MBS Group: there are nine sound stages with a total of over 60,000 square feet of stage space and heights from 25 to 50 feet, and Strictly Come Dancing is recorded there. The BBC Elstree Centre, between Eldon Avenue and Clarendon Road, is owned by AXA, and under an agreement entered into in 2024, EastEnders is set to remain there for twenty-five years; its outside set was rebuilt in mostly real brick for HD, with the new set first seen on screen in March 2022 and the 1984 original dismantled from late that year. Sky Studios Elstree on Rowley Lane was developed and financed by Legal & General and is operated by Sky; located on 27.5 acres, it contains twelve sound stages that range in size from 10,000 to 40,000 square feet, and the most recent of them opened in March 2023. Studio 2000 on Elstree Way is now called Lumiere, relaunched in early 2025 as offices and creative space with one stage kept, and Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden is just a short drive west, although the address falls within a Watford postcode. What all of that puts on a disk is specific: camera original offloaded on set to two or three checksummed copies, production sound files and isolated channels, Avid and Premiere projects, Resolve databases and Pro Tools sessions, cleaned plates and LIDAR scans and EXR sequences, colour decision lists (CDLs), look-up tables (LUTs) and graded masters, DCP and IMF deliverables, the M&E stems a title cannot be dubbed without, and the production office's call sheets, continuity notes, cue sheets and unit stills. Nothing is collected in WD6, and there is no counter in Borehamwood or in London: get a quote first, by telephone or with the quote request form, then simply post us your media or drop it off at our intake lab in Guildford, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). We will read your media without charge and present you with one figure on paper before any chargeable step.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
Five things WD6 puts on the bench.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A card offloaded just once and never checked | A day of original camera footage, with the location returned to its owners | Do not write anything to the card. Get a quote first, then send the card unaltered. |
| Edit workstation hard drive, won't mount. | Avid bins, Resolve database, Pro Tools sessions. | Turn it off. Get a quote first. Then send the drive by itself. |
| A shuttle drive coming back from a VFX vendor | Cleaned plates, LIDAR scan data and EXR sequences on it | Don't pull anything off it. First get a quote. Then send it padded into a rigid box. |
| Production audio media that no longer reads properly | Isolated tracks and the stems a foreign version needs | Leave the reader alone. First get a quote. Then simply post the media. |
| A finishing suite's RAID array, down one disk | The graded masters and all the deliverables due by a date | Do not rebuild; mark the bays. First get a quote. Then send the individual disks bare. |
Before the drive leaves WD6.
Four questions from WD6.
No counter in Borehamwood — does that hold a job up?
It does not. The reason nothing is handed over in WD6 or in London is that all of the imaging rigs, all of the donor disks and all of the benches are located in one single building. However, you may send it by post or drop it off at our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no prior appointment needed. Generally, the media will travel to the engineers while you remain in the suite. Please get a quote first via phone or using the form: a parcel handed in tracked and insured at any WD6 post office counter will generally be in front of an engineer the next working morning, and we will pay for the media to return to you.
A card was offloaded once and never verified. Now what?
Please stop writing to the media, and please make sure that no one reformats the media or runs a repair tool across the media. This particular piece of media is currently the only copy of the day, and each additional write operation decreases the amount of data that can still be read. Please get a quote first via phone or using the form; after you have done so, the card should travel in its own case, and it will be read here before any other attempts are made to recover data from it. Memory cards and memory sticks fall into the £250 + VAT category.
Delivery is Friday. Can a drive be pushed up the queue?
When booking, if you inform us that you wish for priority treatment, two things happen. First, your media is placed onto an imager ahead of all of the other media awaiting attention. Second, instead of having your media picked up by the engineers in between other jobs, one of our engineers works solely on your media from start to finish. Only once the diagnosis can back it up will we provide a completion date, and not before. Business hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm.
An editor's project drive will not mount. Are bins and timelines recoverable?
Generally speaking, yes, and in most cases these are the parts worth focusing on first. A Pro Tools session, an Avid bin, a Premiere project or a Resolve database are examples of very small files containing many months of creative decision-making. Without the associated project, media is merely a collection of unorganised clips. We ask that you identify which projects are important to you, and those projects will receive precedence over the bulk of the volume. Recovery of one individual drive costs £300 + VAT. When the job holds several disks, pricing begins at £500 + VAT, and pricing must be agreed upon in writing prior to charging any fee.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to Borehamwood, on the same terms
Send it from WD6; the first look costs you nothing.
Leave it turned off, leave it where it is, and call us to tell us about the last successful operation it was able to perform. There is no cost to reading it. We will then present you with one fixed figure, and no chargeable step will occur until you agree to proceed.