RG17, Upper Lambourn, Eastbury and the valley villages · Lambourn
Lambourn data recovery. Hundreds of horses go up the gallops at dawn; the yard's paperwork sits on one PC.
Lambourn, RG17, is a parish of about 4,200 people (2021 census) whose economy is one industry. More than thirty licensed trainers, Flat and jumps, work several hundred acres of gallops that Jockey Club Estates bought at the end of 2005 and has run since 2006 — the Valley of the Racehorse, in the estate company's own phrase. Behind every string is a racing office: entries and declarations against a deadline, the owners' accounts at month end, syndicate reports, work-rider lists, the yard's own gallops video and the treatment records a licensed yard keeps, most of it on one PC and a laptop. The village has its own equine hospital; around the yards, farriers, saddlers and horsebox firms work from a van and a laptop. Down the valley at Great Shefford and East Garston, and out at Lambourn Woodlands, are commuters in spare-room offices and retired households with the family's photographs on one external drive. There is no station in the valley and no counter anywhere, so the parcel goes by post, tracked and insured, and comes back at our expense. The first look costs nothing.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
Five jobs the Lambourn valley sends in.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| The racing office laptop that will not start on a declaration morning | Entries, declarations and the owners' month-end accounts, kept on that one machine | Stop pressing the power button; lift the drive out and post it by itself |
| A horsebox firm's office PC that stops at a blue screen | Driver records and every run to the sales and the races, invoiced from that one desktop | Note what the screen says, switch it off, and send the disk rather than the whole PC |
| A NAS in the racing office that has been one disk short for most of the season | Work-rider lists, the syndicate reports and every gallops video the yard has taken, on one box | Shut it down before another member fails |
| An external drive knocked off the desk that now buzzes instead of spinning | Every photograph the household owns, with no second copy of any of them | Do not plug it in again; wrap it well and send it as it stands |
| A laptop that got wet and will not switch on | A self-employed partner's client files, held on it and nowhere else | No radiator and no power button: bag it wet, seal the bag, and post it today |
Four things worth knowing in the valley.
What the yards and the valley ask.
Is the whole valley covered — Upper Lambourn, Eastbury, Great Shefford and East Garston, not just Lambourn itself?
Yes. Lambourn and Upper Lambourn in RG17 8, Eastbury, Lambourn Woodlands and Membury in RG17 7, and the valley villages below them, Great Shefford and East Garston. A Lambourn address carries a Hungerford post town, which changes nothing: no van collects from anywhere, so where you are sets neither the price nor how soon it is seen. The parcel travels to the intake lab by tracked, insured post, gets a free look the day it arrives, and returns to the yard or the house at our expense.
Declarations close this morning and the racing office PC will not start. What helps today?
Today, everything useful happens at your end. Stop pressing the power button, because each retry on a failing disk does a little more harm; lift the disk out of the PC; and get it into a tracked, insured parcel before the village's last collection. Say on the call what date you are working to. The disk is opened the next working morning and imaged read-only before anything else is tried, and if it has to go ahead of that day's bench the priority charge is shown separately on the one written figure. A single disk is £300 + VAT and the look itself is free.
The owners' accounts and the treatment records are on it. Who sees them?
One engineer, and only those parts of the disk that the recovery calls for. The yard's name goes nowhere near the paperwork, because a case number takes its place; nothing leaves the lab or goes to a third party, and every working copy is deleted thirty days after the drive is back in your office. The written figure and the listing of files you check before paying carry that case number, not the yard. The privacy policy sets out what is held and for how long.
Can I hand a drive over in Lambourn, or in Hungerford or Newbury?
No. There is no counter in the village, none in Hungerford or Newbury, and none in Reading either; every job is worked at the intake lab, where the imaging rigs and the donor drives are. Post it from the village by tracked, insured post, or bring it to the lab yourself on a weekday and hand it in at the address printed on the shipping form. The journey home is paid by us either way. If the thing is a NAS or a server, ring first so the packing is settled before it moves.
If this sounds like yours, start here.
Next door to Lambourn, on the same terms
Box it up in the village, post it tracked, and the figure comes in writing.
Switch it off and leave it off, whatever the deadline. Describe the last thing it did — the noise it made, the message it showed, what was open at the time — and say when you need it back. Looking is free, a single written figure follows, and that figure has your agreement before any chargeable work starts.