RG8, Horseshoe Park and Whitchurch-on-Thames · Pangbourne
Data recovery in Pangbourne. Two trains an hour to Paddington, and ten years of client files in a spare room.
Pangbourne is a village in the county of West Berkshire, where the River Pang comes out of its valley and meets the River Thames, to the west of Reading. It can be reached via the A329, or the A340 from Junction 12 of the M4. Pangbourne station opened on 1 June 1840 with the Great Western Railway's route westward from Reading. Two electric trains an hour run each way between Paddington and Didcot Parkway off-peak. This is why many consultants, architects, accountants and software contractors in RG8 work from their spare rooms on laptops that no one at head office has ever touched, with ten years' worth of client files stored on the same disk as their family photos. Around them are the small firms of Horseshoe Park: Companies House lists 76 active companies registered there, in power electronics, IT, lighting, heating and building. There is also Pangbourne College, an independent school, the farm and estate offices further up the valley, and Whitchurch-on-Thames, on the Oxfordshire side of the toll bridge, which shares the RG8 postcode and the Reading post town. Nothing is collected. Get a quote first, by telephone or with the form. The drive is then sent to the Oxford intake lab by tracked post, or you can drop it off there yourself. The first look costs nothing.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
Five jobs that come in from the spare rooms and small units of RG8.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| A laptop in your spare room that can't get past the start-up screen, and holds your client files | Ten years' worth of a consulting firm's work on a hard drive that no employer's backup ever reached | Turn it off and don't allow anyone to install anything; pull the drive out and post the drive on its own |
| A workstation at Horseshoe Park whose NVMe drive has disappeared from the BIOS | A board diagram, a set of test data and a firmware tree are all on this one drive, and exist only there | Pull the NVMe out, put it in an anti-static bag and post it (the workstation stays in the unit) |
| The candidate database for a recruitment company sits on the office PC, and it won't open this morning | Since the firm began, all CVs, placements and invoices are on this single disk | Don't restart it; remove the disk from the computer, and then post the disk bare |
| A farm-office camera recorder along the RG8 lanes that has simply stopped playing back | One disk receives footage from the gate and yard cameras 24/7, and the insurer would like a clip from it | Disconnect the power, remove the disk from the unit, and then post only the disk (£400 + VAT covers a recorder) |
| A heating contractor's laptop that will not boot, with photographs of every job stored on it | Each installation, certificate and photo of every job is on this one disk, and nowhere else | Do not allow a shop to reinstall anything; remove the drive from the laptop, and then post the drive |
Four things that hold for the whole of RG8.
What Pangbourne asks before the parcel goes.
Do you cover Pangbourne, Whitchurch-on-Thames and the rest of RG8?
Yes: the village, Horseshoe Park, all the farms up the Pang valley and Whitchurch-on-Thames (in Oxfordshire, but with the RG8 postcode and the Reading post town), and also Purley on Thames (between Pangbourne and Tilehurst). No van calls at any of these areas, so the price and timing are exactly the same whichever side of the River Thames the parcel starts from. Get a quote first, then send it by tracked post before the afternoon post goes, and it is generally opened the next morning.
The laptop is my employer's and I work from home. Is it still your sort of job?
Yes; from a commuter village, that's the usual job. Your drive is booked to you under a case number, nothing is ever written to it, and it leaves as it arrived: first we create a read-only image of the drive, then we do all our work on that copy. Send us the drive from your laptop (not the laptop). If the storage is soldered onto the board, we can't take it on; if you don't know which kind you have, please ring us first. We will need the encryption recovery key, because an issued laptop is almost always protected by BitLocker or FileVault. This key would have been stored when the laptop was first set up, so ask for it before you post the drive. A single drive costs £300 + VAT, and you see that price in writing before we go further.
A drive in the home office has been wet. Is it worth sending?
Yes, and quickly. A hard disk that has been wet is usually a routine job for us on the bench, provided nobody has turned it on since. Most of the damage happens when a damp platter is spun up under the heads; the rest comes through corrosion if it is left for some time. Do not turn it on to see what happens. Never heat it. Do not open it. Get a quote first and then bag it as it is, damp and all. Write "water-damaged" clearly on the shipping form and post it the same day. If someone has already tried it, send it anyway and say so. One drive is £300 + VAT, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
Is there anywhere in Pangbourne to hand a drive in?
No. Neither the village nor Reading has a counter. Opening up, imaging and recovering the data all take place at the Oxford intake lab. There you are able to drop a drive off in person Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed, at the address on the shipping form; this is the sole point at which a drive changes hands. From RG8 the best route is the post, after getting a quote first: tracked, insured, rigid box. It usually reaches one of our engineers the next working morning. The look is free, and we cover postage back to you.
The same trouble, seen from Pangbourne.
Next door to Pangbourne, on the same terms
Get a quote first, then pack it in Pangbourne; the parcel makes the journey, not you.
Turn it off and keep it turned off. Next, describe what was happening when it failed: did you hear anything? Did you see a light, or a line of text you had never seen before? Looking is free, the figure is given to you in writing, and nothing will be charged until you have agreed that figure.