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RDR / What we take in / Emergency and urgent jobs

Emergency jobs · first onto the imager

Emergency data recovery, Reading. Say it is urgent: opened the day it lands, imaged before anything else.

Urgent means something you can check. As soon as your parcel arrives here, we open it and name the problem before the end of that day. Your drive then goes onto the imager, well ahead of every other job waiting for it. The published bands remain the same: £300 + VAT for a single drive, from £500 + VAT when you have an array, a NAS or a server, and any priority charge will appear separately on the one written quote. A distributor at Theale running one server behind the warehouse office, an edit suite at Shinfield with a card that won't mount, a Newbury office with a payroll run due: all would be better off calling us before posting. So too would anybody in Reading who needs to hit a date.

Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs The diagnosis is free; then one fixed figure in writing Parcels arrive from Newbury, Woodley and Theale

An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668

Urgent jobs: match the symptom to the fault.

Different fault? Begin at the triage →
What you are seeingWhat is likely wrongWhat happens next
The server the company runs on is downEvery disk imaged before anything else is done, then the set rebuilt from those copies, always as priority workRing before you post it
A rebuild stopped part-way and nothing has changed sinceThe right impulse: each further attempt uses up more of what remainsLeave it powered off and call
At the far end of this, there is a fixed datePayroll, a tribunal hearing, a delivery deadline: the work is planned back from your dateGive us the date first
The only copies of the family photos were stored on itA household archive is scheduled just the way a company server isYou get an honest answer either way
File names are changing while you watchContain it first, preserve what you have, then recoverTake the network cable out; don't touch the power
Packing and posting: first, get a quote, either over the phone or using the form. Second, add enough packing material to stop the contents moving. Third, put a reasonable value on the parcel, one that represents what your files are worth to you. The parcel should then go tracked and insured to the Oxford intake lab. Alternatively, you can drop it off at the lab yourself, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. Return postage is covered by us. If you would like one of our engineers to help with the packing before you seal the box, ring us. See our packing and postage page for further details.

What actually sets the timetable.

Logical or mechanicalA purely logical fault on sound hardware often finishes within a day or two. However, just like everywhere else, donor head swaps and piecing together an array from images take longer. You won't be able to make a slow surface read faster than its current speed.
Size and stateHours is what a perfectly good 4TB hard drive costs the imager. Days is what that same capacity costs when every weak sector has to be requested again and again. The capacity and the state of the media together determine how long it takes.
Tracking down a donor matchAnything generic won't work. A replacement board (or replacement head stack) has to come from another drive of the same model and family, with firmware from the same generation. Stock items go to the priority jobs first. An uncommon drive is placed on hold until a suitable donor can be found, and paying more has never sped up the search.
Whatever's been tried beforeWhatever was attempted at a desk comes in with the hard drive: an additional power cycle, an additional utility run against it, a rebuild forced through its own warning messages. Hard drives that have been left untouched go back out faster than anything else.

From your parcel to your files coming back.

01

Logged the day it lands, and the look costs nothing Free

A case number is assigned to your device when we receive it. An engineer then finds the real fault (free) before anything else occurs; you will be advised clearly of what will be returned and what will not, along with a single written price. Charges cannot begin until you have read this and accepted.

The look costs you nothingA fixed price, in writingStill nothing to pay
02

Mention it on the phone

A single sentence does it: the business has stopped, or the date you are working to. The phone call marks the job urgent, assigns a case number and sets bench time aside, all while the package is still in your hands.

Flagged urgent on the callBench time held for it
03

Imaged ahead of the rest

The box is opened and the fault is given a name on the day it arrives. Imaging then runs in one continuous flow, before anything else in the queue behind it. Call whenever you like: the person holding the job can tell you its status.

Opened the day it arrivesImaged without pauses
04

Back as soon as it verifies

Once the files you named as high priority have been checked and open properly, your data goes out: via an encrypted transfer, or on new media we buy for the job and post back at our cost.

Opened and checked firstSent back the fastest way
05

The list first, then the bill, then the files

You look at the file list first and make a decision about what to do. We will never invoice anything until you have said yes, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. All of the information that we recover will be put on new media purchased by us specifically for this job, and our company pays the cost of postage back to you. The case stays open on the bench until you tell us the files open on your own machine.

Nothing billed until you say yesNew media, bought for the jobPostage home is on us

What goes wrong most often

  • Read speed writes the timetable, not the invoice: a healthy multi-terabyte disk is off the imager in hours, while one retrying the same tired sectors at two or three megabytes per second will hold it for days. Everything after that is scheduling around the imager.
  • A fee buys position, not physics: your drive moves up the list and gets worked without being put on the sideline for anything. What money cannot do is conjure a donor nobody stocks, or persuade a worn sector to give up its contents faster.
  • Name the deadline and the read order changes: the sectors under the folders you have nominated are lifted first, go through verification first and are sent back to you before anything else in that volume.
  • The untouched drive is the quick one: a disk that comes in powered down, with nothing run over it and no rebuild attempted, routinely comes home days faster than one that was worked on at a desk.

Five things set the timescale, and paying for priority will not affect any of them: the component that went, the amount of data that needs to be processed (terabytes), the condition of the surfaces, whether a matching donor is already on the shelf, and what was attempted before the parcel was taped. That is why this page shows our working hours as opposed to a badge implying that someone is at the bench all night: Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. Priority parcels from Reading, Newbury, Didcot and the towns in between are opened the day they arrive, run without pauses through every staffed hour, and given a completion date at the point we can stand behind one.

How one of these actually went.

RG · RDG-2026-1953ON FILE ✓

A Thatcham haulier: no bookings on Monday, taking them again by Thursday

They were in the middle of a rebuild when the Monday call came in, so the job went right past the queue. Nothing else was asked of the array: the power came out and it was left in the same condition. Each disk was then imaged individually, and the volume was put together from those images instead of the original, live disks. The database came up cleanly, and the firm was back to taking bookings before Thursday was out.

Their business running again on day 4Pushed aheadof the queue

What helps, and what makes it worse.

First things to do

  • Ring first: let us know the business has stopped, or give us your date
  • Turn the failed machine off and leave it off
  • Have whoever approves the cost within reach
  • Write on each disk (including those written off) the bay it was in

What makes it worse

  • Starting another rebuild while you decide what to do
  • Believing a company that says it can fix a head crash by morning
  • Waiting until tomorrow, when today's call reserves bench time for you
  • Sending half your disks here and half elsewhere

Answers before you commit to anything.

How fast is an urgent job, realistically?

It depends on the type of failure. A logical issue sitting on sound mechanics is frequently resolved within a day or two with high priority. Disk sets are slower to recover than this, as are drives whose heads are starting to fail. The rate that data can be recovered from a worn sector is determined by how fast the imager can read it, and paying more will not make it faster. A real date follows once an engineer has assessed the media, never before.

Is there anyone working overnight?

No. And be wary of any firm which suggests head swaps carry on unattended once its building has emptied; that firm is worth checking. Priority here means one thing: your job goes first in the queue and is worked straight through every staffed hour, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. Hours you can check beat a badge you cannot.

Can you give me a completion date before it arrives?

No. A date quoted without seeing the drive first is simply a guess in disguise. With a physical fault, everything depends on how the surfaces read and whether a matching donor even exists, and neither can be determined by a phone call. Instead, what you get is the following: top place in the queue, an assessment on the day your parcel arrives, and a date as soon as an honest one exists.

Does priority carry an extra charge?

Yes. There is a cost to moving your drive to the front of all the others, and it is listed on the single quote you agree, next to the recovery figure. The diagnosis is free either way, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.

If this sounds like yours, start here.

Servers and RAID arrays → Servers that will not boot → Disks out of a NAS → Every device we handle →

Nothing gets worse while it sits switched off.

There is no charge for the look. You then receive a list of the files that opened, those that did not, and a fixed amount to complete the job. Keep it switched off until you have received that in writing.

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