EC2, EC3 and EC4 · the Square Mile
Data recovery, City of London. A firm's file server, one disk short.
Get the status right or nothing else on this page will land. The Square Mile is not a London borough and never has been: 1.12 square miles run by the City of London Corporation, with a police force of its own that has been the national lead force for fraud since 2006 and runs the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau from within these boundaries. The Corporation's July 2026 factsheet, on 2024 figures, counts 676,000 workers and 24,060 businesses, only 1.8 per cent of them large firms; legal work alone accounts for 55,000 jobs and insurance for 22,000. It empties every night, so the call almost never comes from a kitchen table. At Lloyd's, 1 Lime Street, the underwriting record is the asset — slips, binder records and decades of long-tail claims history on risks where a claim can arrive thirty years after the policy was written. In law it is the document management system and the deal room: the Law Society is explicit that it publishes no retention period, so each firm fixes its own from limitation, from its insurer and from its client care letter, with five years of client due diligence records the only number the regulations fix. Two corrections worth carrying: EC is not the same thing as the City, since EC1N Hatton Garden belongs to Camden and EC1V, up at Old Street and Moorfields Eye Hospital, to Islington, while the Barbican and St Bartholomew's are both here; and Inner and Middle Temple sit within these boundaries as Liberties, whereas Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn are in Camden. No counter exists in the City or anywhere else in London. Post it tracked; examining it is free of charge, and the figure is agreed on paper first: cards and sticks at £250 + VAT, multi-disk work at £500 + VAT upwards, and between them the single hard disk at £300 + VAT and a camera recorder at £400 + VAT.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
What the Square Mile sends.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A partner's laptop that stops at the maker's logo | Matter files and a transaction bible, held locally | Take the disk out; the laptop stays with you |
| A file server that will not come back up on Monday | Deal rooms and e-disclosure sets a regulator may want to see | Mark each carrier with its bay number and post the disks alone |
| A small NAS under a broker's desk, amber for weeks | The share still opens, so nobody thought to mention it | Power it down before another member goes |
| A USB stick the laptop now wants to format | The one export of a binder record off a system since replaced | Let nothing format it; the stick arrives exactly as it is |
| Every file on the firm's share renamed, a note dropped in each folder | A ransomware incident, and the backup drive was mapped to that same server | Take it off the network first — the ransomware page has the rest. |
Getting the parcel here intact.
What firms in the City ask.
Is there a counter in the Square Mile for handing one over?
No, and nowhere else in London has one either. The imaging rigs and the donor shelves live at the intake lab, so it is the media that moves and you who stays at your desk. Send it tracked and insured. An engineer opens the box on the next working morning, examining it costs you nothing, and the return postage is paid at this end.
The matter files go back further than the server does. Can they come off?
Usually. The Law Society publishes no retention period at all — a firm sets its own from limitation, from what its insurer requires and from the client care letter, with five years of client due diligence records the one number the regulations actually fix — so the period routinely outlives two generations of hardware. One hard disk costs £300 + VAT; a memory card or stick, £250 + VAT. Phones and tablets are not handled.
Client papers are on it. Who reads them here?
Nobody beyond the engineer doing the work. The firm's name is not written on the docket; a case reference carries the job the whole way through. Only the areas of the disk the recovery actually needs are opened, no copy leaves the building, and thirty days after your media has gone home the working copy here is deleted. The privacy policy sets out how long each thing is held.
A disk has dropped out of the set on the file server. Now what?
Cut the power at the socket before anything tries to rebuild, because writing to a set that is already one disk short turns a copyable job into an impossible one. A server or a striped set then comes apart: lift each disk out, mark it with its bay, and post the disks by themselves. A NAS goes the other way — that one travels whole, case and disks together.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to City of London, on the same terms
Post it from EC2 and it reaches the bench next morning.
Do not power it up again. What the machine was up to when it stopped is worth writing down before you ring, because it shapes the first hour on the bench. The look is free. One figure then follows on paper, and until you have agreed to that figure nothing chargeable is done.