EC1, N1, N5 and N7 · Islington
Data recovery in Islington. The model may have to answer a defects claim years on.
Islington is a long, thin area that stretches from the City wall at Clerkenwell through Angel and Highbury to Holloway and Archway. It is an area that is based on design rather than teaching. For example, Clerkenwell Design Week, a festival marketing its own street, states that this area is where there are the highest number of creative companies and architects per square mile in the world, so read it as a claim rather than a count. However, the type of work being carried out is not disputed. Each practice maintains Revit central files with local copies that synchronise with the central version, ArchiCAD teamwork files, Rhino/Grasshopper definitions and point cloud survey data, and also maintains an archive of renders. And each practice has to be able to replicate the decision-making process behind its designs years down the road, when a defects or liability question arises. And the single most frequent event that causes a job to move from EC1 to the bench is a central file failure on a practice's server during the middle of a project, which is a common, expensive and entirely ordinary event. Around the practices are located various showrooms for products and furniture with their spec libraries, as well as Sadler's Wells and the Business Design Centre with their respective production/exhibitor data, Moorfields on City Road and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology on Bath Street with their ocular imaging data, and City St George's at Northampton Square, which adopted that name in 2024 when City and St George's merged. According to the council's 2023-24 report, there were 329 accredited London Living Wage employers, plus over a thousand smaller businesses supported, and it named Bunhill and Clerkenwell, Archway, Finsbury Park, the Cally and Nag's Head as its local economy areas. This would represent a reasonable description of a borough composed primarily of small businesses that do not have sufficient personnel to support an IT department. Nothing is collected here, and there is no counter in Islington or in London. Obtain a quote first, by telephone or using the form provided. Then post the media tracked or drop it off at our Guildford intake laboratory, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). Examining it does not incur a charge, and the price is settled on paper beforehand: one hard disk £300 + VAT, cards/memory sticks £250 + VAT, and any item containing multiple disks from £500 + VAT.
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What EC1 and N1 send in.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A designer’s laptop that stops at the logo | Grasshopper definitions and render archive on the local disk | Obtain a quote first, then send only the drive; do not send the laptop |
| Practice server holding central files | Live project and ten years of drawings in one volume | Disconnect power now, then ring us |
| A survey laptop returned from site that will not boot | Point clouds of a floor, collected prior to its rebuilding | Obtain a quote first and post the disk before anybody installs anything again |
| Showroom NAS that no longer mounts | The spec library used by all employees in the office | Pull out the wall plug, get a quote first, then send the disks labelled by bay if possible, otherwise the unit with its disks in |
| Camera card from an exhibition stand, filled in one day | Removed from the reader while the copy was still running | Nothing else writes to it; get a quote first, then it arrives as is |
Before the parcel leaves EC1.
What Islington asks.
Which postcode district counts as Islington's own?
None of them. That's an honest answer. The Borough appears in the postal districts N1, N4, N5, N6, N7, N16 and N19; however, it is the sole authority in none of them. Each district has at least one other borough sharing it: Camden, Hackney or Haringey. The EC1 codes running along the bottom of the borough are also shared with another borough. However, this doesn't affect our work, as there is a single published list covering all of them. Single cards/sticks cost £250 + VAT. Individual disks cost £300 + VAT. Camera recorders cost £400 + VAT. Multiple disks in a single job start at £500 + VAT.
The Revit central file on the practice server is corrupt.
That is one of the commonest jobs out of the EC1 postbag, and stopping right away is critical to recovering the data. Turn off your server. Don't allow anyone to open or synchronise a local copy against it. Get a quote from us first, either by phone or using our quote form. Send us the individual disks instead of sending us the entire server chassis, and label each disk with the bay it occupied. Alternatively, simply drop off the disks at our Guildford intake lab (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed). Since point cloud files, Grasshopper definition files and the rendering archives normally occupy the same volume, please specify which of them your current live project needs first. Everything is captured as a read-only image prior to any attempt being made to repair it. Multi-disk work is quoted on paper, starting at £500 + VAT, before any chargeable step.
Do we open the NAS in the studio and pull the disks out?
Yes, if possible. Disconnect the power at the wall first so it will stop repeatedly attempting to access the drive, don't start rebuilding anything, and get a quote from us first, via phone or our quote form. Then remove the disks from your NAS device and label each disk with the bay it was occupying in that device; if you cannot, the NAS comes to us as one unit with its disks in place. Regardless of whether you remove the disks or leave them intact within the NAS device, it can reach us either by post or through delivery to our Guildford intake lab (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed). Servers and striped sets always have their disks taken out before they are sent to us, with each disk labelled with where it came from. If your server or chassis is going to fall apart soon, call us first.
How does a disk get from Clerkenwell to the bench?
Either by post or by delivering it personally to our Guildford intake lab. After obtaining a quote from us first, either by phone or using our quote form, post it to us or bring it into our Guildford intake lab (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed). Islington has no counter service available at any location within the borough, and neither does any other borough in London. Therefore, in most cases the package will travel to us while your practice continues to work. Track and insure it at any post office counter in Islington, and it will typically arrive on our bench on the next working day after posting. Post the disk on its own instead of sending the entire machine. The initial inspection is complimentary.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to Islington, on the same terms
Post it from Islington and the price comes back on paper.
Disconnect the power to prevent further loss. A practice that continues to try to access a damaged volume normally ends up losing more than it started with. Write down exactly what occurred immediately before it stopped functioning properly, then call us. There is no charge associated with reviewing your data to determine how to proceed. We provide you with a quote on paper afterwards. Your approval is required prior to performing any chargeable services.