RG8, Oxfordshire and Berkshire · Goring and Streatley
Data recovery for Goring and Streatley. Two counties, one bridge, one post town, and one copy of everything.
Goring-on-Thames is in South Oxfordshire; Streatley, across the 1923 bridge, is in West Berkshire; and every address on both sides ends "Reading, RG8" without either village being in Reading. Neither has a business park or an anchor employer. What fails here is domestic, and much of it belongs to people who have retired: at the 2011 census 31.7% of Goring was aged 65 or over, the highest share in South Oxfordshire, which in practice means decades of family photographs on one external drive, the scanned letters, the family tree, and a tower in the study that has never been backed up. Round that sit the home-workers Goring's neighbourhood plan records, the small practices run from offices and spare rooms (the local directory lists HR consultancies, a wealth manager, solicitors and an accountancy), a 47-bedroom hotel, a youth hostel, care work and the golf club. There is no counter in either village and nothing is collected. Post the drive to the intake lab, insured for what it is worth; the look is free, and one written figure arrives before any chargeable work does.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
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Five jobs from two villages and two counties.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| An external drive of scanned slides that now asks to be formatted | Years of digitising in retirement, and the drive was the only place it was kept | Say no to the format, unplug it, and send it in untouched |
| A Windows 7 tower in the study that no longer starts | Thirty years of working papers and the family tree, never once backed up | Power it off, lift the disk out and post only the disk |
| An accountant's laptop, in January, stalling for a minute at a time | Every client's year-end on the one disk, and the disk has been reporting errors for weeks | Copy it off today |
| The recorder behind a bar that will not play back, though every camera shows live | One disk, recording over itself round the clock for years, and now worn out | Switch it off at the plug and send the whole recorder, lead and all |
| A two-bay NAS in a club office that has stopped mounting | The tee sheet, the members' list and the greenkeeping records, and the box was the only copy | Take the power off at the socket; the whole box travels, disks still in their bays |
Four things that are the same in both counties.
Four questions that come in from both villages.
Do you cover both villages, Goring-on-Thames and Streatley, and the lanes out to Gatehampton?
Yes, both, and it makes no difference which county you are in. Goring-on-Thames is South Oxfordshire and Streatley is West Berkshire, but a drive goes the same way from either: to the intake lab, by post, tracked and insured, at the same published price and into the same queue. Every RG8 0 and RG8 9 address counts, out along Gatehampton Road to the station and up the A417 towards the Downs. Nothing is collected, so a house out on the Downs and one on either High Street are treated exactly alike. The first look is free and the carriage home is ours.
It is a parent's computer and nobody has the password. Can the photographs still come off it?
Usually, yes. An account password on Windows or on a Mac is not encryption: if the disk itself is healthy, the files can be read from it directly, password or no password, and they come back to you on new media with a list of what was found. What does stop it is full-disk encryption, BitLocker on a newer Windows machine or FileVault on a Mac, which needs its recovery key. Look for that first, under the Microsoft account or Apple ID the machine was set up with, before you post anything. Leave it switched off in the meantime and send the disk alone, or the whole laptop if you would rather not open it. One disk is £300 + VAT.
Goring is in Oxfordshire and Streatley is in Berkshire. Does that change anything?
Not for this. Two parishes, three councils and two counties post to the one intake lab, at the same published prices, and the case number does not record which side of the Thames it came from. The only place the county line shows is the envelope: every address in both villages reads "Reading, RG8", though neither village is in Reading and Goring is not in Berkshire at all. The councils are another matter. On 16 July 2026 the Government said it was minded to put both villages under one new council from 1 April 2028, so two places divided by a county boundary since before Domesday may soon answer to the same council for the first time. Until then they do not, and either way the postcode alters nothing about how the job is handled.
Is there anywhere in Goring or Streatley to hand a drive in?
No. There is no counter in either village and none in Reading; the imagers, the donor shelves and the bench are all in the one intake lab, and that is where every job is opened. Post it there, tracked and insured, by whichever courier or counter is nearest, and it is usually under a bench by the following working morning. If you would rather carry it, the lab takes hand-ins on weekdays at the address the shipping form carries. Either way the journey back is paid by us.
If this sounds like yours, start here.
Next door to Goring and Streatley, on the same terms
Box it up in Goring or Streatley; the figure comes before the work.
Power it down and leave it down. Then describe what it was doing as it stopped: the noise, the message on the screen, the light that changed colour. The look is free; the figure comes to you in writing; nothing chargeable starts without your say-so.