WC1, NW1, NW3, W1T and EC1N · Camden
Data recovery in Camden. A bench PC with the only copy of a commission model.
Camden holds more documentary material per square mile than anywhere else in London, in institutions a great deal older than their systems. WC1 is essentially the borough's southern half: UCL, Birkbeck and SOAS in Bloomsbury, where research datasets and instrument output live on individual academics' laptops and portable drives; the British Museum a street away; Great Ormond Street, 389 beds and no emergency department; the National Hospital on Queen Square. The British Library sits on the Euston Road, and its own published account is the most useful document any business in this borough could read. The Rhysida group exfiltrated roughly 600GB on 28 October 2023, the main catalogue was not restored until 15 January 2024 — both dates are in the Library's own Learning Lessons report — and Financial Times reporting in January 2024 put the rebuild at £6 to 7 million, about 40 per cent of its reserves. The collections were never in question — they are physical and intact — but the systems describing them were out for a year. Two postcode facts sort locals from visitors. W1T is the only W1 district that belongs to Camden, which splits the Fitzrovia advertising, architecture and design trade along Cleveland Street. And EC1N, Hatton Garden, is Camden too, where a workshop's CAD models, the STL files sent for casting and the stone photography are what let a piece be remade or repaired years afterwards. North of the Euston Road the market traders, the King's Cross offices in N1C and the practices of Camden Town carry the same exposure on smaller kit. Nothing is collected anywhere in the borough. Post it tracked and insured: examining it is free, and the price goes on paper first — £300 + VAT on the single hard disk, £500 + VAT upwards where several disks belong together, and £250 + VAT on a card or memory stick.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
Five jobs Camden puts on the bench.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A bench PC in Hatton Garden that will not start | The CAD model and commission record for one piece | Keep it switched off and send the disk |
| A tower under a desk in a Bloomsbury department | Research data, instrument output and a thesis in progress | Leave it unplugged and post the drive alone |
| A camera card the reader now shows as empty | A studio's stone photography, pulled mid-write | Format nothing, read nothing more from it, post it as found |
| A practice server that no longer mounts its volume | Case papers and chambers records out of Gray's Inn | Stop restarting it and ring the lab first |
| A family external drive that has begun to click | A household's whole photograph collection, nowhere else | Do not power it up again — clicking is damage happening |
Four things worth settling before it is posted.
What Camden asks first.
Is Hatton Garden in Camden, or does the EC1 make it the City?
Camden. EC1N is Camden for almost all of its length whatever the letters imply, and the same catch runs the other way up in Fitzrovia, where W1T is Camden while W1W next door is Westminster, and both councils formalised that split in 2014. The borough climbs from Holborn through Bloomsbury, King's Cross and Camden Town to Hampstead and Highgate, and no part of it is collected from.
The bench PC holding the CAD models has stopped.
Power it down and leave it down. On a jewellery bench the Rhino or Matrix model, the STL file sent out for casting, the stone photography and the commission record with its sizing and specifications tend to live in one place and one place only — and between them they are what lets a piece be repaired or remade a decade later. Undo the screws, leave the machine where it stands, and post the disk alone. That is £300 + VAT, quoted on paper before anything chargeable.
The research data sits on a laptop nobody ever backed up.
That is the commonest shape in WC1 by a distance. Datasets, instrument output and the analysis behind a thesis, on one academic's machine or a portable drive that shuttles between buildings. It is imaged read-only and every attempt happens on the copy, so what you post arrives home as it left. Tell us when the work is due and the job is marked to match.
Is there anywhere in Camden to leave a drive?
There is not, and London has no public counter either. Jobs are booked at the intake lab, home to the imaging rigs and the shelf of donor drives, so the media goes travelling and you remain where you are. Tracked, insured post from any counter in the borough normally reaches the bench next working morning. Looking is free and the leg home is ours.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to Camden, on the same terms
Pack it in Camden; the parcel does the rest of the journey.
Do not switch it on again. Knowing what the machine was doing in the minute before it stopped is the most useful thing you can pass on, so have that ready. Examining it is free of charge. One figure then comes back to you on paper, and until you have read it and said yes nothing chargeable is done.