Urgent work · first onto the imager
Urgent here means something you can verify yourself. The parcel is opened on the day it lands, the fault has a name by the close of that day, and your drive reaches the imager before every other job waiting for it. Urgency moves no published band: one drive stays at £300 + VAT, and arrays, NAS boxes and servers still start at £500 + VAT. A priority charge, where one applies, is written on its own line of the single quote you agree. A Park Royal distributor whose whole business runs off one server in the warehouse office, a Soho edit suite with a card the machine will not mount, a Bromley practice that has Friday's payroll to get out — all three should ring before posting, and that goes for any urgent job in London.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
| What is going on | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| The server the entire firm depends on has stopped | Each disk imaged before anything is attempted, then the array put back together off those images — priority work every time | Telephone before you post it |
| A rebuild halted midway and has been left alone since | Sound instinct — every retry from this point spends more of whatever is left | Leave it switched off and call |
| There is a hard date at the end of this | Payroll, a tribunal, a despatch date: name yours and the bench works backwards from it | Give us the deadline at the start |
| It carried the only copies of the family photographs | A household archive is scheduled exactly as a company server is | You get it straight either way |
| Filenames changing in front of you | Contain it, preserve what is left, then recover | Unplug the network lead and leave the power be |
A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.
A single sentence covers it: trading has stopped, or this is the date I have to make. That call books bench time, opens a case number and puts the urgent flag on your job, with the parcel still in your hands.
Arrival day brings two things: the box open, and a name on the fault. Imaging runs after that in one continuous pass, in front of whatever else is queued. Call as often as you want — the engineer holding your job will say how far it has got.
Once the files you singled out as the priority open properly and read back clean, your data leaves. It goes either as an encrypted transfer or on new media, bought in for the job and posted to you with the postage at our end.
What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine of your own.
Five things govern the timescale, and paying for urgency alters none: which component failed; how many terabytes have to be got through; what state the surfaces are in; whether the shelf already holds the right donor; and the amount tried before the box was taped. It is why this page prints its opening hours instead of a badge hinting at somebody sitting at a bench overnight. The hours are 9am until 5:30pm, Monday to Friday. A parcel marked priority — out of London, out of Bromley, out of Croydon, out of the towns between — is opened as it arrives, worked through every staffed hour without a break, and given a finish date once there is one worth standing behind.
The call came on the Monday with a rebuild still turning, and the job was moved forward. First thing said: cut the power, and ask the array for nothing else. After that each member got an image to itself, and the reassembly ran on those images, never on the drives. The database came up whole, and by Thursday the firm was booking work again.
That is the fault's decision. Where the trouble is logical only and the mechanics sound, priority jobs are often done within forty-eight hours. Arrays run longer, as does any drive with heads that are failing. Past that point the imager rules: worn sectors surrender what they hold at whatever pace suits them, and no amount of money hurries one of them. Assessment first, an honest date second — never the reverse.
No — and a firm hinting that head swaps carry on with nobody there once its building has emptied deserves a second look. Priority buys one thing on this bench: your job at the top of the list, worked without interruption through every staffed hour. Those hours run Monday to Friday, 9am until 5:30pm. Hours you can telephone and test beat a badge nobody can.
No. A date given sight unseen is a guess in a good suit. Where the fault is physical it turns on how the surfaces behave once imaging starts, and on whether the right donor — same model, same firmware generation — can be had at all. Neither is a telephone question. Three promises stand in its place: top of the list, an assessment the day your parcel lands, and a date the moment an honest one exists.
It is. Putting your drive ahead of everyone else's has a price, and it is written onto the single quote you agree, alongside the recovery figure. The diagnosis is free either way, and on most work nothing recovered means no invoice.
Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the drive switched off.