SM1, SM5, SM6 · Sutton
Sutton data recovery. An instrument PC at Belmont, a family desktop in Cheam — both arrive with the only copy.
You would expect Sutton to resemble a normal outer-London borough, and it does. However, Sutton holds one extraordinary thing. Up on the chalk at Belmont, where the land climbs to the North Downs, there is the Royal Marsden's site at Downs Road, Belmont SM2 5PT, founded in 1851 and the first hospital in the world dedicated entirely to cancer treatment. And nearby sits the Institute of Cancer Research, with 895 academic staff working on genetic epidemiology, molecular pathology and drug development. The London Cancer Hub has been developing around them since 2019, with Maggie's Centre, the Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery in 2020 and the Oak Cancer Centre in 2023, and the current phase of development runs until 2035. The type of laboratory work that occurs here typically results in sequencer run output, mass-spectrometry data, flow-cytometry files, slide-scanner images and radiotherapy planning sets. Very frequently this data lands first on a control PC adjacent to the instrument. This PC is normally an older model using an outdated OS, with one internal disk and no backup, as the instrument software will not run on anything newer. That machine is the typical laboratory job on this bench. The rest of the borough is quieter, and honestly so. Carshalton, Cheam and Wallington are independent old parishes, each having their own high street; Carshalton and Wallington each possess post towns of their own, and Cheam is addressed as Sutton. They are full of small practices keeping client ledgers on one office machine, while the northern edge at Beddington Lane, Therapia Lane and Hackbridge is made up mainly of builders' merchants, motor traders and recycling companies with weighbridge tickets and environmental returns to produce. Behind all of it is an owner-occupied suburban community reliant upon cars, where the family archive is contained within one desktop unit. We do not collect, and we do not have a counter either in Sutton or in London. First obtain a quote by telephone or by completing our request form, then send us your media by tracked, covered post or deliver it personally to our Guildford intake laboratory, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (appointment not required). We do not charge for the diagnosis, and one figure goes on paper first: £300 + VAT for a standalone drive, £250 + VAT for a memory card or USB stick, £400 + VAT for a recorder, and from £500 + VAT where more than one disk is involved.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
Five jobs the borough sends in most.
Different fault? Try the finder →| What is going on | What arrives from here | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| An instrument PC that no longer accesses its hard disk | A run of data that took seven days of machine time to produce | Leave the device switched off; get a quote first, then remove your disk and send it |
| A laboratory storage array that will not function | Image stacks and radiotherapy planning sets stored across multiple disks without duplicate copies being made | Shut down the set, label each disk with its bay number, obtain a quote first, then post the bare disks |
| The external drive a surveyor takes out and back every day | For weeks, it travels in and out of a site bag every day | When you hear the click, switch it off |
| A practice desktop unit in Carshalton that will not boot | Client ledgers and correspondence, all maintained in a single location | Give it no more power; obtain a quote first, then send the disk separately |
| A home-based NAS unit that no longer mounts | Twenty years of family photos stored on a box that has never had another copy made | Turn it off and obtain a quote first; post the disks labelled by bay if possible, or post the entire box as it is |
Four things laboratory and office work run into.
What the borough asks.
The instrument PC runs an operating system nobody has updated in years. Does that matter?
It does not matter to the recovery. What we read is the disk, not the operating system located on it, thus making the operating system version unimportant, whether it is the latest version or whatever older version the control software needs. Let us know which file types are important (raw sequencing files, spectrometry runs, image stacks) and the listing is built around those. The phone is answered by a person, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm.
A partial recovery would be no use to us. Then what?
Then we feel the explanation of what was recovered is as important as the files themselves. No data will ever be written back onto the original disk. A read-only image of the disk is created prior to any other action being taken, and all subsequent actions are performed upon the image rather than the disk. What you receive is a detailed listing, file by file, with files listed as "complete", "partially complete" and "unrecoverable", so integrity can be checked rather than assumed.
Finance will want paperwork. What is issued?
Everything is issued, and all of this paperwork is included without any additional cost. The quoted amount is provided in writing before any chargeable steps are taken; the itemised file listing is provided for your approval at the end of the process; and the VAT invoice is sent afterwards. Where a disk has to be opened, half is payable up front, and this is clearly stated in the quote. Each case has a single reference number throughout all documentation.
We are in Carshalton rather than Sutton. Same prices?
The same prices apply regardless of location. SM1, SM5 and SM6 lie wholly within the borough; SM2, SM3 and SM4 each cross a boundary, which is why Belmont, Cheam, Morden and Worcester Park share a district with somewhere else, but since no collection occurs, this does not affect either the price or the order of processing. Obtain a quote first via a phone call or through the quote form, and then send the media with tracking and cover, or bring it to our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment necessary). We pay for the leg home.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Next door to Sutton, on the same terms
Send it from Sutton and say when you need it.
Cut the power and do not turn it back on again, as each time you do so will cause a loss of readable sectors on the disk. State what was running when it stopped, for example an overnight run, a slide batch or a file being written. There is no cost for looking; you will get one figure on paper; and no chargeable activity will occur until you give us permission to proceed.