HA1, HA2, HA3 and HA7 · Harrow to Stanmore
Harrow data recovery. A practice, a hire firm, a food distributor, each on one machine with nothing behind it.
Working lives in Harrow take place on smaller estates rather than under one big employer, and that naturally shapes the types of problems encountered in the workshop. The council's listing of its own units shows that there are twenty-two at Christchurch Industrial Estate on Forward Drive in Wealdstone, thirty-eight at the business centre on Rosslyn Crescent, fifteen at Waverley on Hailsham Drive, eleven at Crystal Way off Elmgrove Road, and then Honeypot Lane in Stanmore, which is the largest of them at 21.2 acres. There are accounting and professional practices using client ledgers, VAT and payroll runs and also many years of scanned correspondence; event-hire and audio visual companies whose rigging plans, lighting-desk show files, CAD stage drawings and event photos go out on a shuttle drive and come back on the same one; food distributors with stock levels and allergen information; and glazing and automotive suppliers with fabrication drawings. Above these units at Stanmore is the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, which has been based at this location since 1922 and trains about one-fifth of all UK orthopaedic surgeons, and the work around it relates to imaging series, custom implant design files and gait-lab motion capture. Behind this entire borough are Gujarati and Tamil family firms where all of the books, the customer list and the family photographs are on a single desktop. Nothing is collected by anyone in Harrow, and furthermore there is no counter in Harrow or anywhere else in London. Get a quote first, either by phone or with the form, then post the drive tracked or drop it off at our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). The first examination costs nothing, and a single written figure is given to you before any charges are made.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
What the HA estates send in.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A hire company's shuttle drive, coming back home from a job | Show files, rigging plans and the weekend's photos, all on the same drive | You must copy nothing else off that drive. Get a quote first, then post the drive by itself |
| A practice server that will not start after it has suffered a mains fault | Client ledgers, VAT returns and payroll runs for the whole book | Do not even attempt to rebuild. Simply turn it off at the wall. |
| A Stanmore research computer that can’t find its disk | Imaging series; implant design files; motion-capture runs | Just leave it alone; the install process will write over all remaining free space |
| The yard recorder on the estate shows nothing | Four cameras recording activity around the loading doors, all onto one very worn-out disk | Remove that disk before those cameras start writing over it with new data |
| The shop’s external hard drive, clicking as soon as it’s plugged in | That’s twenty years’ worth of accounts, plus the family album, on a single disk | Do not plug it back in again; get a quote first, then post it exactly as it is |
Four things to get right first.
What Harrow asks first.
Is there anywhere in Harrow to hand a drive over?
There is not, and no public counter exists anywhere else in London either; the only place this can be done is the Guildford intake lab. One building there holds the imagers, the donor stock and the benches, so usually the media makes the journey and you get on with the week. Get a quote before you send it, by phone or using the form provided on this website. Once you have a quote, any Post Office branch within HA1, HA2 or HA3 can send your unit, tracked and insured, and it should be opened the next working morning after posting. Alternatively you can personally hand-deliver your unit to our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, and there is no need to make an appointment. Examining it is not charged for, and we will pay for the return postage.
The practice server has stopped. What do we do first?
Do not let the system continue trying to boot up: pull the plug at the wall and don’t allow it to try again. Also do not attempt a rebuild, whatever options the controller gives you. Take each disk out of its bay and label each disk with the bay it came from, and include the disk that failed first, labelled as such, because its contents are the oldest in the group. Get a quote first, by phone or using the form on this website, then send the disks alone to us at the Guildford intake lab, or drop them off personally, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). The case stays in position. If you can take the disks out of your NAS, you may want to remove those in the same manner as above; otherwise you may send the entire NAS in its own case. Please call 0203 0868633 prior to opening any servers. If you send multiple disks, the job goes into the £500 + VAT band and upwards.
Client ledgers and payroll are on it. Who gets to read them?
Only the engineer working the job. Your name will not appear on the paperwork; a case number is used instead. Each disk is imaged (read-only) before any attempts are made to repair or recover it, and the recovery process runs against that read-only copy of your disk, therefore your original disk is not altered in any way. Thirty days after you receive your returned disk, we will delete any working copies held here, and this will also be acknowledged in writing.
There is a job on Saturday. Can it be looked at sooner?
Tell us when you call. We give an urgent drive priority on the imager over all other work and have one technician handle it from start to finish, which is where days can be saved. No one at this lab will create a completion time just to satisfy you; we only provide one when we feel the diagnosis will support a completion time. Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Near Harrow, on the same terms
One parcel out of Harrow, one figure back in writing.
Turn off the power and do nothing further. It is helpful to know how the system was acting in the days before the problem occurred: clicking, reading slowly, not opening files. There is no charge for the examination. You receive the figure in writing before anyone spends any funds on your behalf.