CM13, CM14, CM15 · Brentwood
Data recovery, Brentwood. One or two directors, no server, no second copy, and everything on the one desktop.
The town's largest corporate headquarters at Warley closed in 2019, and what a place of about 55,000 has kept since is a great many experienced people working for themselves. That is the shape of the trade here: a limited company with one or two directors, no server behind it and no copy anywhere else. Out of CM13, CM14 and CM15 come financial advisers and mortgage brokers with client suitability files and advice records under retention; insurance and claims work; accountancy practices running Sage or Xero on a desktop with seven years of client papers in one folder; solicitors with matter files and conveyancing packs; private clinics holding patient records, consent documentation and clinical photography; estate agents; media and events firms with project archives and artwork masters; the motor trade with service histories; and a very large building and home-improvement sector working the villages and green belt, whose external drive was last plugged in the day the machine was set up. The borough around all of that is mostly green, with nine civil parishes and six country parks, and land, stock and management records to go with them. Two bands cover most of what arrives: £300 plus VAT for a single drive, £500 plus VAT and upwards where a job holds several. Nothing is fetched from an address. The media is posted and the examination is free.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
What Brentwood sends in.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| An adviser's desktop that stops before it finishes starting | Suitability files and advice records held under retention | Take the power off; post the disk only |
| A practice server that no longer sees two of its disks | Client ledgers, payroll and seven years of accounts, in one place | Nobody rebuilds it. Label the bays and send bare drives |
| A laptop that now demands a BitLocker key | The 48-digit key was never written down by anyone | Power it down before another member goes |
| A clinic's external drive, clicking since Friday | Consent documentation and clinical photography from every visit | Stop using it — a drive that clicks is spending what it has left |
| A builder's rugged drive that will not mount at all | Job files, certificates and photographs of work now sealed behind plaster | The commonest arrival on this bench; leave it unplugged |
Packing it up for the trip.
Asked most in CM13.
Is a CM13 address in Essex or in London?
It can be either, and this is the local catch. CM13 covers Hutton, Ingrave, Herongate and the Horndons, and reaches into both Basildon and the London Borough of Havering; CM14 takes in Warley and also crosses into Havering; only CM15, with Shenfield, Doddinghurst and Kelvedon Hatch, is Brentwood alone. Since nothing is ever fetched, the boundary makes no difference to a price.
Nobody here does IT. What does finding out cost?
Nothing at all. The examination is free whichever way it goes, and out of it comes one written figure which then holds — £300 + VAT if a single hard disk is involved, £250 + VAT for a camera card or a USB stick. You see the file listing before any payment is asked for, and where data cannot be recovered most jobs carry no charge. This laboratory does not take phones or tablets.
These files may end up in a dispute. What comes back?
Your disk is only ever read. Work runs against a read-only image rather than the media, so the drive returns exactly as it left, with the recovered files on fresh media and an account, file by file, of what read and what refused — the form an accountant, an insurer or a solicitor can use. Where a formal instruction is needed, that band opens at £800 + VAT.
The office NAS has run a disk short for months.
Take it off the socket now and let nobody start a rebuild, because a rebuild is what pushes the next tired disk over. Send the NAS intact — still built up, still in its case, with nothing taken out. It is the reverse for a RAID set or a server: lift each disk and number it for the bay it came from.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to Brentwood, on the same terms
Post it from Brentwood; the look is free.
Unplug it and let it stay unplugged, because every attempt to start a failing disk takes something off what is left. Describe on the phone how the machine had been behaving first. The examination is free of charge. One written figure follows it, and chargeable work waits for your agreement.