RG30, RG31 and Calcot · Tilehurst
Data recovery in Tilehurst. It costs nothing to find out whether it can be done.
A memory stick or card is £250 plus VAT. A single hard disk is £300 plus VAT. RAID sets, NAS boxes and servers start at £500 plus VAT, and the look that tells you which band you are in costs nothing. In most areas this would not matter so much, but it does in Tilehurst. This is because Tilehurst is a domestic and sole-trader patch rather than a business-park one: the dense strip of small firms along School Road and Chapel Hill, the garages and salons, the Calcot retail parks over on the RG31 side, and a great deal of housing behind both. So what fails is an accounts machine that is also the family computer, a booking system stored on one laptop, a garage's diagnostic and MOT records on a workshop tower that has never been backed up, card-terminal exports stored nowhere else, job photographs that are the only proof of work done, and external drives used to store family photos, scanned papers and twenty years of correspondence. As for the name: Tilehurst comes from tigel and hurst, a wooded hill where tiles were made, and the kilns at Norcot Hill, Grovelands and Kentwood reached their peak in the 1880s. Tilehurst produced the bricks from which Reading was built. Get a quote first, then post the drive tracked; the figure comes in writing ahead of any chargeable work.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
Five jobs that come in from RG30 and RG31.
Different fault? Begin at the triage →| What you are seeing | Why it lands on our bench | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| An accounts machine that doubles as the family PC | VAT returns, invoices and all your photos, on a single disk | Leave it turned off and send just the disk, not the tower |
| A garage workshop tower that won't start | Reports from the diagnostic software and MOT records that were never backed up | Remove the disk from the case and then post the disk alone |
| The booking system and diary on one laptop | All appointments and customer numbers are held behind it | Don't keep turning it on, and ring before anyone sets it back up |
| A small branch back-office PC that boots into nothing | Stock counts, till exports and card-terminal records | Switch it off first and then send just the disk |
| A family photograph external drive that clicks | Twenty years of photos and scanned documents, with no backup | Unplug it right away; each time you turn it back on, you spend what is left |
Before you tape it shut.
Four questions Tilehurst asks.
There is no office in Tilehurst. Is that a problem?
No. There is no counter in Tilehurst or in Reading. The bench, the imagers and the shelves of donor stock are all located at the same place, the Oxford intake lab, so the disk travels and you do not. Just get a quote first and post it tracked and insured from any post office counter in either RG30 or RG31, or drop it off at the Oxford intake lab. Drop-offs can be made Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, without the need for an appointment. It is usually opened the working morning after. Return postage is ours.
A repair shop says the disk is finished. Are they right?
Often, no. The job of a repair shop is to get your computer working again. Data retrieval from a disk that has gone quiet is a different trade altogether, with its own equipment. Drives written off elsewhere are sent to us almost every week and image cleanly on the right equipment. We charge nothing to assess one, so there is no cost to you in asking.
Does an RG31 address cost more than an RG30 one?
No. It does not matter what postcode you have. The assessment is free of charge regardless of where you live, and a single fixed figure is written for you before anybody opens a drive. You can refuse to go ahead once we have quoted you, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. We also pay the return postage wherever the parcel started.
It is personal rather than a business. Do you take domestic jobs?
That is most of the Tilehurst postbag: the family computer that also deals with the accounts, a laptop from a spare room, an external drive of photos. £250 + VAT covers memory cards and sticks, and £300 + VAT one hard disk, and you view a file list and approve it before paying. No phones and no tablets.
Pick the one that matches, Tilehurst.
Next door to Tilehurst, on the same terms
Get a quote first, then post it from Tilehurst and pay nothing to find out.
Switch it off and go no further. Tell us how it behaved before it stopped working. The assessment costs nothing, you get the price in writing, and nothing is billed until you say go ahead.