RG2, RG7 and Junction 11 · Shinfield
Shinfield data recovery. A card that mounts empty and a unit still working: nothing here waits politely.
Shinfield is home to the camera cards, DIT carts, scratch arrays and shuttle drives that are the most time-critical media anyone sends us. Next to Junction 11 of the M4 sits Shadowbox Studios Shinfield, which comprises eighteen climate-controlled soundstages amounting to 433,649 sq ft; two of these stages are 41,000 sq ft with a 50 ft working height, and according to the operator they are the largest fully soundproofed, heated, air-conditioned stages in the UK. There are also nine acres of backlot and thirty-eight workshops, all completed in spring 2024. On the same land is the Thames Valley Science Park, which is wholly owned by the University of Reading. It houses around eighty organisations working in digital media, quantum computing, medical diagnostics and biotechnology. Beside them, two national museums are building permanent digitisation operations: the British Museum's Archaeological Research Collection took delivery of all 1.3 million objects by March 2024, and the Natural History Museum's collections, science and digitisation centre (25,000 square metres; £201m of government investment) is due to be complete in 2027 and operational by 2031; it will hold about 28 million specimens, roughly a third of the Museum's collection. This represents image data on a scale Berkshire did not have five years ago. Get a quote first, then send it tracked to the Oxford intake lab. The first look is free of charge, and the price is settled in writing before any work is done.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
Five jobs this parish sends in.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| A camera card that mounts empty | It came out of the camera before the final write had completed | Put nothing else on it; send the card just as it was |
| A scratch array on an edit suite that has shut down | RAID 0 doesn't have any redundancy, and the conform is due | Unplug it, label each disk with the bay it came from, then post the disks |
| A shuttle drive, used as a bridge between unit and post house | In and out of a bag every day, for weeks on end | When you first hear a click, turn it off right away |
| A digitisation workstation that can't find its own disk | Image sets generated constantly, with a catalogue waiting for them | Leave it powered down and send the drive on its own |
| A spin-out's NAS that has stopped mounting | Two years of research, paid for by the team instead of IT | Power it down; send the disks labelled by bay if they come out, otherwise the whole NAS |
Four things production and lab work should know.
What Shinfield asks.
A unit is still working and the card will not mount. Can it be rushed?
Once you flag the job as urgent when booking, this will be recorded in our system. It will then be placed on an imager the day it arrives, ahead of the day's other work rather than slotted between it. Once we have made a sufficient diagnosis, we will send you a completion date so you can begin planning. Somebody answers the phone Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm.
The card is the only copy. What actually happens to it here?
It is never written to. First, we create a read-only image of it; all attempts thereafter are made on that copy, and your original card or drive goes back exactly as it arrived. All recovered files will be returned on new media with an itemised report detailing what was successfully read and what was not. This allows you to check it before any money changes hands.
What paperwork comes with the job? Production accounting needs it.
All of it, included free. One fixed price in writing before anything chargeable begins, an itemised list of everything recovered for your approval, and a VAT invoice after recovery. Opening a drive is a different story: half the fee is required upfront, as stated in the quote and not sprung on you afterwards.
Do you cover Spencers Wood, Three Mile Cross and Grazeley?
Yes, all of the parish: RG2, the RG7 part of it, Ryeish Green and Shinfield Rise. Nothing is collected, so your address doesn't affect the price or where you are in the queue. Get a quote first, then send the media tracked and insured; it will have a free examination on arrival, and we will pay for the journey back.
Start here if Shinfield sent you this.
Next door to Shinfield, on the same terms
Get a quote first, then send it from Shinfield and tell us the deadline.
Leave it switched off. Describe how the failure looked to you: what was showing on the screen when it went down? What did it last do or sound like? That first look is included at no cost. The price comes to you in writing for your approval before anything is billed.