RG6, Lower Earley and Whiteknights · Earley
Data recovery for Earley. One postcode, three sorts of machine, each carrying the only copy of something.
RG6 sends three quite different problems and they often arrive in the same week. From Whiteknights — the University of Reading has been there since 1947, with more than 27,000 students from 147 countries and over 4,000 staff, and the campus sits partly in Earley — come PhD fieldwork on a single external drive with no second copy, and instrument PCs from the science departments. From Thames Valley Park, beside the Thames off the A3290, come encrypted, estate-managed corporate laptops, increasingly belonging to people whose employer is mid-move: Oracle is looking for new offices in Reading, Microsoft has consolidated into one building, and nobody on that campus is certain what it becomes next. From Lower Earley, a very large 1980s estate, comes a wall of family external drives. Suttons Business Park adds the service and light-industrial layer, and from early 2027 the organisation that runs the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data will be working from Earley Gate. There is no counter in Earley. Post it tracked: the look is free, and one figure in writing follows before anything chargeable starts.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
What RG6 sends over.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| A laptop SSD the BIOS has stopped listing | An estate-managed machine, encrypted, with local work still on it | Pull the SSD and post that on its own; keep the laptop |
| A single external drive holding three years of fieldwork | No second copy was ever made, and the submission date will not move | Stop using it and send it in; the free look decides the rest |
| A desktop PC that has slowed month on month | Every SMART warning dismissed, until the morning it stops spinning | Copy it off today |
| A lab instrument PC that will not finish starting | Acquisition software nobody dares patch, and the output is local | Send the disk and leave the instrument where it stands |
| A home NAS bought for the family photographs | Set up once, never checked, and now it will not mount | Power it down and send the unit exactly as it stands |
From an RG6 counter to the bench.
Four things Earley asks.
There is client and research data on it. Is the post safe?
Yes. Your name does not go on the job — a case number does. The engineer goes no further into the data than the recovery requires and leaves the rest untouched. Any working copy still here is deleted thirty days after your drive goes home, and none of it reaches anybody outside the lab. The privacy policy sets all that out.
What is the turnaround from Earley?
An engineer usually has it the morning after you post it or drop it in, with the written figure following shortly. Say yes to that and most logical faults are finished inside two working days. Anything waiting on donor parts runs longer — a seized motor, a multi-disk set — and you are told which of the two you are dealing with before you commit to anything.
What paperwork comes with it?
Everything, with nothing added on top. One figure, in writing, and it stays that figure. You go through the list of what was recovered and sign it off before anything is paid, and an itemised VAT invoice follows. Where a drive has to be opened, half is due up front and the quote says so plainly.
Could I take it to the lab myself?
You can — the intake lab takes drives in by hand on weekdays, and the address is printed on the shipping form. In practice tracked, insured post does the same job for a great deal less trouble, and the parcel is opened the working morning after it arrives. Return postage is ours either way.
If this sounds like yours, start here.
Next door to Earley, on the same terms
Send it from Earley and get the figure before you commit.
Switch it off and leave it that way. Then tell us what it had been doing at the moment it stopped. The look is not charged for, the figure arrives in writing, and you agree to that figure before any work starts.