Colthrop, RG18 and RG19 · Thatcham
Data recovery for Thatcham. The test can never be run again; the video of it is the only record there is.
Some files cannot be produced again at any price, and the clearest example in Berkshire comes from this town. Thatcham Research has been the motor insurers' automotive research centre since 1969, working from Colthrop; the vehicle-security categories insurers still quote were written here; and high-speed test video and ADAS validation runs are irreplaceable for the plainest of reasons — the vehicle was written off in the test. Around it, the Colthrop end of town is a former paper-mill site turned over to industrial estates and haulage depots grouped near the station for the logistics, and it sends warehouse and stock databases, telematics exports, vehicle-camera footage and the single ageing tower that runs a light-industrial firm's accounts. Add 25,464 residents at the 2021 census, most of them commuting, and a great many home machines holding the only copy of something. Post it insured. Looking at it is free.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
What comes in from Thatcham.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| A test machine holding high-speed video and validation runs | No second take, and no second vehicle to run it on | Leave it powered down and tell us the date you are working to |
| A distribution server that did not restart after a power cut | Stock, routing and proof-of-delivery records going back years | Send the disks; the machine stays with your IT |
| A yard recorder that has quietly stopped writing | One disk, overwritten week after week, until it is worn out | Take the disk out of the recorder, and then stop there |
| A haulage office PC that will not get past the maker's logo | Routing, telematics exports and the driver records all live on it | Cut the power and send the disk on its own |
| A commuter's home laptop that has begun to click | Family photographs and the overflow from a work machine, together | Stop using it — every restart costs you a little more |
Four things to settle before it goes.
Thatcham's four commonest questions.
Do you cover RG18 and RG19, and the villages north of the A4?
Yes — RG18 and RG19 both, which is Thatcham north and south, Colthrop, and out through Cold Ash, Hermitage, Hampstead Norreys and Yattendon, plus Greenham, Bishop's Green and Ashford Hill. It is the drive that makes the journey rather than you, so a farm lane at Yattendon and a unit on the Colthrop estates are the same distance from the bench. Something posted midweek is usually with an engineer the next morning.
The test data cannot be produced again. Can that job be moved up?
Tell us at the booking and it is flagged urgent on the spot. The box is opened and imaged the morning it lands, ahead of the day's queue rather than squeezed into it. As soon as diagnosis has gone far enough, you get a completion date to hold us to. Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm, is when the phone is answered.
A warehouse server has stopped. What should nobody do to it?
Nobody should let it rebuild, and nobody should reinstall anything over it. Take the power off, write the bay number on each disk before it leaves the chassis, include the member that failed first, and post the bare drives without the case. A NAS box is the exception — that can travel whole, exactly as it stands.
Where does a drive from Thatcham actually go?
The intake lab, at the address printed on the shipping form. Thatcham has no counter and neither does Reading: imagers, donor stock and the bench all sit in one building, so the drive is the thing that moves. Send it insured, or bring it in during the week. Diagnosis costs nothing and the return journey is paid at this end.
If this sounds like yours, start here.
Next door to Thatcham, on the same terms
Send it from Thatcham; it is opened the morning it lands.
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.