SE4, SE6 and SE14 · Deptford, Blackheath and Catford
Lewisham data recovery. Every pattern and product photograph on one laptop. Stop now — restarting costs more.
Lewisham is a borough of makers rather than offices, and the loss that arrives from it has a particular shape: one laptop or one portable drive holding everything a sole trader has ever produced. Cockpit Deptford holds well over a hundred of them in a converted 1960s council building — jewellers, ceramicists, textile designers, furniture makers, metalworkers — and their working files are CAD and 3D models cut for casting and CNC, laser and vinyl paths, product and commission photography, e-commerce exports, and the record of who commissioned what. The New Cross and Deptford Creative Enterprise Zone, designated in 2018, reports 955 businesses supported, £2.65 million put into affordable workspace and 35,000 square feet of new space; the Mornington Centre holds another 120 creatives, and Acme and Art Hub more again. Around them sit Trinity Laban in the Laban building on Creekside and The Albany, both carrying rehearsal and performance recordings; Deptford's street trading; Millwall at The Den on Zampa Road; and the ordinary Catford layer of solicitors, accountants and surveyors, with University Hospital Lewisham in SE13 and a trust of nearly 7,500 staff behind it. Only SE4, SE6 and SE14 belong to Lewisham outright — Deptford's SE8 is split three ways, and Blackheath is shared with Greenwich. Nothing is collected in this borough and there is no counter anywhere in it. Send the media tracked and insured; 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 that come in from Lewisham.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A maker's laptop that will not get past the logo | Every pattern and every listing image, held once | Leave it off and send the drive by itself |
| A studio NAS with one bay showing amber | Commission records, 3D models and the whole photo archive | Cut the power and post the box exactly as it stands |
| A rehearsal recorder that will not read its own disk | A term of rehearsal and performance takes, on one disk | Draw the disk out, leave the recorder, post the disk |
| An accounts database in Catford that will not open | Client ledgers, timesheets and years of scanned files | Stop restarting it and ring 0203 0868633 first |
| A household external drive that has started to click | Twenty years of photographs, kept nowhere else at all | Leave it unplugged; each spin-up costs you a little more |
Four things worth knowing before it is posted.
What Lewisham asks most.
Does this cover Deptford and Blackheath as well as Catford?
All of it. SE4, SE6 and SE14 belong to Lewisham outright — Brockley, Crofton Park, Ladywell, Catford, New Cross — while SE8 at Deptford is split three ways with Greenwich and Southwark, and SE3 at Blackheath is shared with Greenwich. None of that alters anything at this end. The Ravensbourne is a borough boundary, not a price list, and nothing is picked up from any address anyway.
One bay on the studio NAS has gone amber. Do we carry on?
Cut the power to it before anything else. What makes a set short of one disk awkward is how ordinary it looks: files still open, work still saves, so it runs on until a second disk stops and the whole thing halts together. Begin no rebuild. Draw the disks out one at a time, write the bay number on each, including the one that stopped, and post the disks without the chassis. Anything multi-disk sits in the £500 + VAT band and upwards.
A commission is due and the files are on it. Can it be hurried?
Two things change when a job is booked as urgent. Imaging happens ahead of whatever is already queued, and a single engineer stays with it start to finish instead of slotting it between other jobs. Ask for it on 0203 0868633 when you book. A completion date follows once the diagnosis is solid enough to support one. Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm.
Is there a counter for this anywhere in the borough?
Not in Lewisham and not anywhere in London. A drive can be handed over at the intake lab in Guildford on a weekday if that suits you, but almost nobody does it that way. The imaging rigs, the donor shelves and the bench live there together and none of that travels; the media does. Assessment on arrival costs nothing and the journey back is paid by us.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to Lewisham, on the same terms
Pack it in Lewisham; the parcel does the rest.
Leave it switched off. The most useful thing you can tell us is what the machine was doing in the minutes just before it stopped, so have that ready for the call. The first look is free. One figure follows in writing, and until you have read it and said yes, nothing billable is done.