RM1 to RM14 · Romford, Hornchurch, Rainham, Upminster
Data recovery for Romford and Havering. A tachograph file and a weighbridge ticket have no second copy.
Havering is the easternmost London borough and over half of it is green belt, which is why so much of its trade happens in a yard rather than an office. Around 10,325 businesses work here and something like 7,000 jobs are in construction alone. The Rainham strategic industrial land beside the Thames, part of London Riverside, holds more than 500 logistics, engineering, manufacturing and distribution firms, with CEME and its start-up units among them; Harold Hill Industrial Estate covers roughly 31 hectares off the A12, with M25 access; and Romford, a market town since 1247, still accounts for about three-quarters of the borough's B1 business floorspace. What all of that generates is not correspondence. It is the tachograph download, the weighbridge ticket, the TG20 scaffold pack, the setting-out data for work already under concrete, the diagnostic log behind an MOT — material a client, an insurer or an inspector can ask for at a day's notice, and usually on one machine nobody has ever copied. No drive is fetched from Havering. It goes by post, the examination is free, and one figure is agreed in writing beforehand. Cards and sticks come to £250 + VAT, a single disk to £300 + VAT, a recorder to £400 + VAT, and anything holding more than one disk starts at £500 + VAT.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
Five faults that keep arriving out of RM.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A gate recorder that will not play anything back | Months of yard cameras, on the single disk in the box | Unplug it, then send the box or the disk out of it |
| The one office PC in a haulage yard | Driver hours, job sheets and downloads, held nowhere else | Send the disk on its own; the machine stays put |
| A rugged external that rides in a van | Setting-out data and photographs of covered-up work | The commonest job on this bench; do not power it up again |
| A merchant's NAS now running on one surviving disk | Its warning email goes to an address nobody reads | Every member is imaged before a rebuild is attempted |
| Knocked over in the yard, and clicking ever since | A laptop that rides in a cab all week takes more knocks than anyone counts | Keep it off; each start-up costs a little more of the disk |
Getting the drive here, and the price.
Four questions that come up most.
My RM address is in Essex, not London. Any difference?
None at all. RM is the Romford area, not the borough: it starts at Chadwell Heath and carries on past the M25 to Lakeside, Purfleet and Tilbury, so half of it sits in Thurrock rather than London. Because no drive is ever fetched, an Upminster yard and a Grays yard are on identical terms — tracked parcel out, free examination, and the postage home is settled at this end.
The gate recorder has stopped playing anything back. Now what?
Pull its power lead and stop it writing, because a recorder left running keeps laying new footage over the older material. Then post either the whole box or the disk out of it, whichever is easier to get at, and say roughly which dates you need. Recorder work — CCTV, DVR or NVR — is the £400 + VAT band, quoted in writing before anybody starts.
This may end up in front of a traffic commissioner. What is returned?
Nothing is ever written to the disk you send. The first step is a read-only image; all subsequent work runs against that image, so the media itself comes back to you unaltered. The quote is one number, agreed on paper before anything chargeable begins. You get the files on new media plus a line-by-line account of what read clean and what refused — which is what an inspector, an insurer or a solicitor actually wants.
Best way to wrap a drive for the post?
Movement is what finishes off a drive in transit, so stop it moving. An anti-static bag if you have one, and pad out every face of the carton until the drive cannot shift; whatever box the drive originally shipped in does the job well. Book a tracked service and insure it for the value of what is on it rather than the value of the hardware. Slip a printed shipping form in beside it.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to Havering, on the same terms
Pack it properly in Romford — looking costs nothing.
Take the power off at the wall and keep it that way. Say what the machine was part-way through when it stopped — a download, a night of cameras, a drawing being saved. Nothing is charged for the examination, the figure that follows goes down in writing, and it waits for your yes.