RG7 and M4 Junction 12 · Theale
Data recovery, Theale. Junction 12 made Theale what it is; the warehouses behind it run on one server each.
Theale is the motorway edge of Berkshire for logistics and offices, and it fails accordingly. When the M4 opened in 1971, the junction was built just to the east of the village; it removed the through traffic from the High Street and brought the warehouses as well: stock and warehouse-management databases, telematics, gate and yard camera footage on a recorder, and a proof-of-delivery archive that exists in only one location, since a small operator runs one server in a partitioned office off the warehouse floor. Around the station are five business parks (Arlington Business Park, next to Junction 12, opened in 1989 with eleven buildings surrounding a lake), and with them come encrypted laptops, shared drives left over after a cloud migration, and a NAS purchased by a team rather than by IT. In 2018, Nokia opened its south-east office at Arlington. On the other side of the parks, the farms and estates of RG7 keep their claim records, herd books and field maps on a single office computer. There is no counter in Theale and no van. Get a quote first, then post the drive tracked to the Oxford intake lab: the first look is free, and the written figure is settled ahead of any chargeable work.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
Five faults RG7 keeps sending.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| A warehouse server that can't mount its volume | All the stock, routing and proof-of-delivery records stored in only one location | Unplug it, label each disk by its bay, and post the drives bare |
| The one office computer in a partitioned office off the warehouse floor | A busy operator will run the same tower for a decade | Only post the disks; leave the chassis with your IT staff |
| An external hard drive that lives in the back of a van | All the site photos and survey files, and the only copy anyone made | Portable drives are the most common arrival on this bench |
| A two-disk mirror that has been running for months on one disk without anyone noticing | The disk that failed first sent out a warning nobody read | Both disks are imaged before any rebuild is even attempted |
| A laptop that started clicking after a knock in the yard | Kit carried from site to site all week takes more than it appears | Do not switch it on; each time it boots up uses a little more of what remains |
From an RG7 counter to your front door.
Four questions RG7 puts to us.
Which places round Theale do you cover?
RG7 and all of its villages, including Bradfield, Beenham, Burghfield Common, Mortimer, Riseley, Silchester, Swallowfield and Woolhampton, and also the business parks on either side of the station. Nothing is collected, so a farm office out past Bradfield reaches the bench on exactly the same terms as a unit at Junction 12.
The array stopped part-way through a rebuild. Power it off?
Stop the rebuild sooner rather than later. The rebuild process must read every sector from all the remaining disks, and that sustained workload is just what finishes off a second tired member. Stop one halfway through and you may end up in an even poorer condition than the initial failure left you. So shut everything down, label each disk with a bay number before it leaves the chassis, and then send the drives bare. A NAS box sends its disks too, labelled by bay, if they come out; otherwise the entire NAS travels. Anything holding more than one disk opens at £500 + VAT.
We have to be able to produce these records. What comes back?
Nothing is ever put back onto the disk you post. The image created from it is read-only. All other steps are performed on the copied image, and your original returns as it was when received. Your price is set at the beginning, in writing, before any of it begins. At the finish there is a detailed record of the files that were successfully copied and those that would not lift: the sort of documentation auditors or inspectors will ask you to produce.
How should I pack a drive before it goes in the post?
Movement is what causes the damage, so deal with that first. Put it in an anti-static bag (if you have one) and pad it on all six sides, or simply put it back into its original box if it has just sat in your cupboard since purchase. Get a quote before sending it off, post it tracked, insure it for what it is worth, and include a printed copy of the shipping form with it. The posting page covers the rest, and we cover the return postage.
For Theale, these are the near neighbours.
Next door to Theale, on the same terms
Get a quote first, then box it tightly in Theale; the look costs nothing.
Switch it off and don't touch anything else. Tell us exactly what it was doing when it went down. Diagnosis is free, you will get the figure in writing before we do anything, and nothing is agreed until after you have read it.