PL30 & PL31 · Bodmin
Bodmin data recovery. Warehouse servers off the A30, shop floor PCs, the only computer on a moor farm.
Bodmin is located in mid-Cornwall, to the south-west of the moor that bears its name, where the two major trunk roads meet: the A38 from Plymouth joins the A30 here. At the 2021 census the parish population stood at 16,909. Bodmin was the county town of Cornwall from 1838, until the council moved to Truro in 1889 and the courts followed in 1988, so today the work is mainly distribution, light manufacturing and agriculture rather than administration: stock records on an office server, CAD and CNC files on a shop-floor machine, a moor farm's accounts on the house computer. There is no main-line station in Bodmin itself (Bodmin Parkway is sited out to the south-east, towards Lanhydrock), so many of these drives never had a second copy made. Whatever has failed, please turn it off. Obtain a quote, then post your device, with tracking and insurance, and it will arrive at our intake lab in Bristol, which gives it a free look the day it arrives.
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0800 6890668
Five jobs that come in from around Bodmin.
Yours not here? Start at the triage →| What turns up | Why it ends up here | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| A stock-control server has dropped its second disk | Another failure and an entire warehouse's record set will be unreadable | Turn it off. Refuse the rebuild. Keep the drives in bay order. |
| The shop-floor PC holding all the CNC programs won't boot | The part programmes are typically held only on the machine that runs them | Remove the disk, leave the PC alone, and send the hard drive by itself |
| The farm's single home computer has started clicking when you power it on | Livestock, stewardship and financial records, all on this single machine in the house | Pull the plug now and do not keep attempting to boot it up |
| An external drive containing scans and photographs was dropped, and now it no longer mounts | A volunteer's archive of drawings and images, stored at home with no backup copy | Keep it unplugged, pad it well, and post the drive with its cable and power supply |
| A yard-gate recorder that plays nothing back | A DVR continually overwrites its own disk day and night, and eventually wears it out early | Turn it off so it doesn't keep writing to the disk, remove the disk and send just that |
Four things worth settling before it leaves Bodmin.
The questions Bodmin asks.
Do you also cover Bodmin itself and the parishes around the moor?
Yes, PL30 and PL31 and the surrounding parishes. Media goes to our intake laboratory in Bristol, so once you have your quote you may post it tracked or drive it there yourself: east on the A30 to Launceston, across the Tamar with no toll, then on to Exeter and the M5. The first look is free on the day it arrives, and the return postage is covered by us.
A disk in our server has failed and it wants to rebuild. What next?
Switch it off and leave it off. Don't allow the controller to rebuild: writing new data to a disk that was already failing turns a RAID array we could still read into one we cannot. Note which bays the drives were installed in, send them out of the chassis, and each is copied separately before the array is rebuilt.
Everything at work runs on one computer that was never backed up. Is the hard drive readable?
Usually. Quotes, drawings, matter files and accounts tend to sit on one single machine that nobody ever considered a server, and deadlines do not wait for it. Remove the drive, put the machine to one side and send only that drive. If the storage is soldered to the board, we cannot take it on; if you're not sure which kind you have, ring us first.
Can someone come to Bodmin and collect the drive?
No, we have no van, and no counter either here or in Plymouth. Tracked, insured post arrives faster than any driver could; however, if you'd like to deliver the drive in person, our Bristol lab welcomes drop-ins Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. Please ring us in advance if your item is an unusual shape and we'll discuss packing during the call.
Pages people open after this.
Next door to Bodmin, on the same terms.
Post it from Bodmin, and it's on the bench the day it arrives.
Keep it unplugged. Let us know how it failed. Nothing is agreed until the free diagnosis has told us what caused the failure.