OX11 and the campuses · Didcot
Didcot data recovery. Beamline output, sequencing runs, three years of results, all on one external drive.
The failures that reach a lab like ours from OX11 are not the national facilities' own storage. They are researchers' laptops, personal external drives, a group NAS that IT never registered, instrument PCs running acquisition software nobody dares patch, and the machines of spin-outs and contractors working on the campuses. Harwell Campus, near Didcot, puts its own numbers at more than 7,500 scientists, engineers and innovators across over 250 organisations, with Diamond Light Source, the ISIS neutron and muon source, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the National Satellite Test Facility and the National Quantum Computing Centre on it. Culham, also near Didcot, adds fusion. Milton Park, near Didcot as well, counts around 250 to 280 organisations and roughly 9,000 people on the park's own figures, and sends engineering simulation files, semiconductor project data, stock-image catalogues, and book distribution and warehouse systems. Didcot itself had 32,183 residents at the 2021 census and has been building ever since, and a hyperscale data-centre campus is now consented here too. Post the drive tracked to the intake lab; the first look is free.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
What OX11 sends in.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| A researcher's laptop that will not get past the maker's logo | Three years of results, and the copy on it is the only one | Leave it powered down and post the drive on its own |
| An instrument PC that stops before the acquisition software starts | Validated kit nobody dares patch, with the output on a local disk | Send the disk; the instrument stays where it is |
| A group NAS the IT department never knew about | A team bought it, set it up once and never checked it again | Power it down and send the unit exactly as it stands |
| An external drive of image sets that has begun to click | Catalogue photography and scans that took months to produce | Unplug it now — every further minute of it costs you |
| A warehouse server that stopped part-way through a rebuild | Stock, despatch and proof-of-delivery records sit behind it | Cut the power, mark each disk with its bay, post the disks |
Four things to get right before you post it.
What OX11 asks.
Is there anywhere in Didcot to drop it in?
There is no counter in Didcot, and none in Reading either. Everything a job needs — imaging hardware, donor stock, the bench itself — sits under one roof, which is why the drive makes the trip instead of you. The address is printed on the shipping form; post it there tracked and insured, and it is opened and assessed free of charge the day it lands. Postage home is at our expense.
How soon does a drive posted from OX11 come back?
Post it on a working day and it is normally under a bench by the next morning. That look is free, and the price which follows arrives in writing as one figure. Two working days covers most file-system and deleted-file work. Anything mechanical runs longer, because donor parts have to be found and matched. You are told which kind of fault you have at the outset, not halfway through.
The results are on an instrument PC that has stopped. What now?
Pull the power and stop there. Repair utilities make matters worse, and a reinstall laid across a failing disk can finish the job before it starts. A read-only image comes off the drive first, the recovery is then attempted against that image, and your disk goes home in the state it arrived in. If a deadline rests on particular files, name them and they are lifted ahead of everything else.
There is a NAS in the office. How do we send it?
Call 0800 6890668 before you touch it. A NAS travels whole, still in its own case — there is no need to open one. Servers and RAID sets go the opposite way: take the disks out, and as each one comes free mark it with the bay it occupied, so the order survives the journey. Include the member that dropped out first, send bare drives, and let nothing start rebuilding while the box is in transit.
If this sounds like yours, start here.
Next door to Didcot, on the same terms
Post it from Didcot and the work starts on arrival.
Take the power off it, then leave it be. Describe what the drive was doing at the moment it stopped — usually the most useful thing you can hand us. Diagnosis is free, the figure reaches you in writing, and nothing begins until you have agreed to it.