PL21 and the Erme valley · Ivybridge
Data recovery for Ivybridge. The largest town in the South Hams, and the work comes home on one drive.
Ivybridge is the largest town in the South Hams. It lies on the River Erme at the southern edge of Dartmoor, and the population of the built-up area was recorded as 12,484 in the 2021 Census. Ivybridge grew quickly after the A38 Devon Expressway opened past the town on the south side in 1974. In 1921 there were approximately 1,500 residents, and today there are over 12,000, because the road put Plymouth within easy reach and made it an attractive place for commuters. Much of the professional work done by residents is carried out in Plymouth, but they keep their working files on a home laptop, NAS or external drive at a PL21 address. Stowford Paper Mill was the mainstay of the town for 226 years until it ceased operations in 2013. The economy of Ivybridge now includes retail, education, the businesses at Lee Mill on the western edge, and a great many young families who store their photographs on a single phone or laptop. If a disk fails, get a quote, then send it to us by tracked and insured post. We will tell you free of charge what data can be recovered.
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0800 6890668
Five faults PL21 keeps sending us.
Yours not here? Start at the triage →| What turns up | Why it ends up here | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| A home laptop that won't boot and holds the work done in Plymouth | Office in Plymouth, but the only copy stored at a PL21 address | Switch off, leave alone, remove the disk and send the disk only. We do not take on soldered storage. If you're not sure which kind you have, ring us first |
| The single tower a one-person business runs on | No server or backup: all accounts and client work are held on one single computer | Get a quote from us. Then send the hard drive to us and let your own IT rebuild the computer |
| A DVR taken from a unit at Lee Mill | A DVR records over the top of previous recordings, so the clip you want is the first to be overwritten | Take out the DVR's own hard disk and post it separately once we've quoted you |
| A farm office NAS up the Erme valley that won't mount any more | A mirror array can keep running on one disk for several months until the second disk fails | Turn off the NAS. Number each of the disks in bay order. Send them bare (or the entire NAS if they do not come out) |
| An external drive that started making a clicking noise after being dropped at home | In a town this young, one single hard drive may contain an entire family's picture history | Disconnect the drive. Do not run recovery software on it. Once we've provided a quote, post the drive to us along with its power supply and USB cable |
Four things worth knowing before you post from Ivybridge.
Four questions Ivybridge puts to us.
Do you serve Ivybridge itself and the surrounding villages?
Yes, the entire PL21 area: Ivybridge and its surrounding villages (Brownston, Cornwood, Ermington, Modbury and Ugborough). Media goes to the intake lab in Bristol. Once you have a quote, post it tracked, or deliver it in person Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed. The first examination is free and done the day your parcel reaches the bench. We bear the cost of returning your media to you.
The children's photographs were all on it. Is there any chance?
Often, yes. A drive that clicks or will not mount is precisely the type of drive we work on. The first step is creating a read-only image. This way, nothing we do adds to the damage, and the recovery runs from the image while your original is left intact. Before we begin, you will receive a fixed price in writing. At the end, you will receive an itemised list of what was recovered. For households here, photographs are the most common thing we recover.
The home NAS began to rebuild and has since frozen. Should I pull the power?
Yes. During a rebuild the surviving disks have to read every sector, and that heavy reading is often what finishes off a disk that was already weak, so a stalled rebuild can leave you worse off than the first failure did. Shut down the unit, write down which bay each disk sat in, remove the disks and send us just the bare drives; you can keep the housing. If the disks will not come out of the enclosure, please send us the whole NAS.
Can I bring the drive to you somewhere in Ivybridge?
No, we don't have a counter in Ivybridge, nor do we have one in Plymouth. Obtain a quotation, then send the item to our intake lab, fully insured for its value and tracked, with your printed shipping form inside the package. If you wish to deliver it in person, our Bristol lab accepts drop-offs from 9am to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday, without needing an appointment. If your item is an awkward shape to post, ring and we will sort the packaging during the call. Either way, we pay for the journey back.
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Next door to Ivybridge, on the same terms.
Get a quote, then package it up here in Ivybridge and send it to the lab in Bristol.
Keep it unplugged. Let us know how it failed. Nothing is agreed until the free diagnosis has told us what caused the failure.