SE10, SE7 and SE18 · Royal Greenwich
Greenwich data recovery. A show build and a season of orchestral parts: one copy each, no way to make another.
The Royal Borough carries out two completely separate functions. To the west of the peninsula is a UNESCO World Heritage site, including the Old Royal Naval College, the Royal Observatory, the National Maritime Museum and the Cutty Sark. To the east of it are Woolwich, Plumstead, Abbey Wood and Thamesmead, an area that lost its defence sector after the closure of the Royal Arsenal in 1994 and has spent the past thirty years being redeveloped as housing. Situated between these areas is the newest area of all. Woolwich Works opened on 23 September 2021 across five listed Arsenal buildings and houses the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, Punchdrunk and Protein: orchestral libraries and parts, rehearsal and performance recordings, show-control and lighting data, set and technical drawings, and immersive builds incorporating 3D graphics, audio and game-engine assets. This represents production media stored locally on fast storage rather than documentation served from a server. Out on the peninsula is the Design District, a collection of sixteen buildings by eight architectural practices that opened in September 2021 for approximately 1,800 workers, which runs on single-machine studios and external solid-state drives (SSDs), with Ravensbourne University London located next door and 8,685 students behind it. And the postcode system is less complex than it appears: the arena, Ravensbourne and the Design District are all SE10, as are Greenwich town and the Cutty Sark, and only Charlton's SE7 is entirely within Greenwich. Moving eastwards, the work becomes much plainer: Queen Elizabeth Hospital is situated in SE18, smaller trade businesses exist throughout Eltham and Charlton, and Peabody's twenty thousand homes are going up at Thamesmead, which spans two boroughs and has no station of its own. Nothing is collected anywhere here, and there is no counter in Greenwich or in London: get a quote first, by phone or with the form, prior to sending the media to our Guildford intake lab in a tracked and insured parcel, or drop it off personally at the intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (appointments not required). Assessment on arrival is free, and the price goes on paper before anything else: cards and sticks at £250 + VAT, one disk on its own at £300 + VAT, multi-disk work from £500 + VAT.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
Five jobs Greenwich sends in.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A studio SSD that mounts then disappears | All media from one immersive build held in one place only | Unplug it, leave it alone, get a price first, then send the drive on its own |
| A rehearsal machine which will not complete its startup sequence | Recordings and show states written directly to the local disk | Obtain a price first, then send the disk on its own and leave the machine where it is |
| A design-studio tower, now clicking | Drawings, renders and every client job stored in a single folder tree | Off at the wall, and no further attempts made to power it on |
| A four-bay network storage system purchased by the studio and not the IT department | Plugged in once, filled to full capacity and never looked at again | Obtain a price first; if possible, remove the drives, labelled by bay; otherwise send the whole cased unit |
| An office server that stopped partway through a rebuild | Every current project, every invoice and the whole email database | Shut down completely; label each disk with its bay number; obtain a price first; then post them bare |
Before it leaves the Royal Borough.
Four Greenwich questions.
Is the O2 in Greenwich or Tower Hamlets?
Greenwich: the O2, North Greenwich Station, Ravensbourne and the Design District are all SE10. The E14 North Greenwich on old maps was a nineteenth-century name for the tip of the Isle of Dogs opposite, in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Greenwich town, the Cutty Sark and the Old Royal Naval College are all SE10 too, while SE7 Charlton is the only district entirely within this borough; but that has no bearing on the terms, as nothing is picked up from any postcode.
How long does a drive posted from SE18 take?
Posted on a weekday, it will usually be with an engineer by the next morning. The initial inspection costs nothing, and from it you receive one written price. Most file system problems and deleted-file jobs are usually completed within two working days. Mechanical issues may require additional time to resolve, since in such cases we must source a donor hard drive and then match it to your faulty drive. From the start, we will tell you whether your job falls into one category or the other.
The show build sits on a studio SSD and it will not mount. What now?
Shut down the device immediately and do not continue to attempt to use it. Any utility attempts to diagnose or fix the problem may damage the data on the drive. Installing Windows back onto a failing disk could also result in loss of access to your data. A read-only image of your drive will be created prior to attempting to recover data from it. All subsequent steps will be performed using that image. Your original drive remains intact and unchanged when returned. If a rehearsal or an opening depends on certain items, please identify them and they will be prioritised.
How should a studio NAS travel from the peninsula?
Call 0203 0868633 beforehand and obtain a quote, either via telephone or by completing the quote form. Remove the individual disks from the NAS if possible, and mark each drive individually with its bay number so they are clearly identifiable when they arrive; otherwise, send the entire unit with all the disks inside, still enclosed in their casing. When sending server units or RAID sets, we always require individual disks. Please remove the individual disks from your RAID set or server, label each disk individually with its bay number as it comes free, and do not leave anyone to guess the order in which the disks should be placed once you have removed them from your unit. Include the failed member of your RAID set or server in the package too, bare like the rest, and make sure any rebuild has been stopped prior to sending it. Once you have prepared the package, please post it or deliver it personally to our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed).
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to Greenwich, on the same terms
Post it from SE10 or SE18 and work starts on arrival.
Turn off the power supply to it and let it remain switched off. What was the machine doing when it last operated? That information is likely to be worth more to us than any other information you could send. The examination will cost nothing, you will receive the price in writing, and billable work will not take place before you have confirmed your acceptance of our quote.