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PDR / The jobs we take in / Urgent and priority jobs

Urgent jobs · front of the bench

Plymouth emergency data recovery. A dead drive halts everything; yours will be the first loaded onto our imaging equipment.

Stoppages are paid for in different ways around Plymouth. A shipping agent at Millbay needs paperwork completed before a crossing to Roscoff. Drivers are waiting at a haulage yard out at Langage until a missing manifest is found. Priority here means nothing other than your job going to the top of the work order. Anything marked urgent on arrival is opened immediately, assessed before the end of that working day, and takes the imager ahead of everything else.

Nothing readable? Most jobs carry no bill Free diagnosis, then one written price Boxes come to the lab from Truro, Newquay and Tavistock

You will be talking to an engineer
0800 6890668

What each symptom points to.

Yours not here? Start at the triage →
What turns upWhat that points toWhere to start
The server the firm depends on has stoppedDisk images made first, then the array rebuilt from those copies, always as priorityOpen with 'business down'
A rebuild that stopped midway, and nothing touched sinceCorrect — every retry takes more of what remainsLeave it off and ring
There is a fixed date for the dataPayroll, a tribunal, a sailing: the bench plans back from the dateTell us the date first
The family photographs were unique, there was no backup, and the disk is deadHousehold photographs rank here alongside a company serverYou get a straight answer either way
File names are altering as you watchContain first, preserve the evidence, recover afterUnplug the network lead; do not touch the power
Getting it to us: once you receive your quote, wrap it securely so it cannot shift in transit, insure it for its value, and send it tracked to the intake lab in Bristol. We cover the return postage. If you want an engineer to check the packing before the box is taped shut, contact us before sending. Details are on our contact page.

Where the hours go on an emergency job.

The kind of faultHealthy hardware with a purely logical fault is normally done within two days. Donor swaps and rebuilding arrays from images take longer, here as anywhere. However quickly you want the job done, reading from a slow drive cannot be sped up.
Capacity and conditionA 4TB drive in good condition can occupy the imager for several hours. A failing drive that keeps retrying the same bad sectors can hold it for days. In the end, the timetable depends on both the capacity of the drive and its state.
Finding the matching donorThe replacement part, either the board or the head stack, must be identical: model, family and firmware generation. A priority job gets first choice of the parts we have in stock. However, an unusual drive takes as long as finding a donor takes, and no fee speeds that up.
Whatever was tried alreadyEverything done at home comes in with the drive: one more power cycle, one more attempt with diagnostic software, a rebuild pushed through the warnings. Drives that have not been tampered with leave here soonest.

What happens to a drive while it is here.

01

A number on arrival, then the free diagnosis Free

Whatever is delivered is booked in using a unique reference (case number) on the date it arrives at the bench. The engineer will identify the actual fault at no charge. This gives a straightforward answer on what can be recovered from the drive and what cannot, plus one written quotation. There will be no further activity until you have read and accepted the quotation.

Diagnosis at no chargeA single written figureYou owe nothing yet
02

Tell us on the call

Two words are enough, 'business down', or simply tell us the date you are working to. That one call flags the job urgent, creates a case number and holds bench time. We don't need your parcel to arrive to do this.

Flagged urgent on the phoneBench time reserved
03

First onto the imager

We open the box and identify the fault on the same day. Imaging then runs from start to finish before any other drive waiting its turn. You may call at any point and speak to whoever has your job; they will tell you exactly how far along it is.

Opened on the day it landsImaged straight through
04

Returned once it checks out

Once the files you named at the start open properly, the data leaves us: by secure data transfer, on fresh media through the post, or collected by you in person at Bristol.

Verified before it leavesThe quickest way back
05

You give the word, and it ships back

Give yourself time to consider it. It costs you nothing. We list all of the files we recover for you before sending out an invoice, and we only ask for payment once you have authorised it. We also buy media specifically for your recovery and send it back to you, with the return postage paid by us. The case stays here on our bench until we have your confirmation that the files open properly on your own machine.

You see the list and decideWritten to fresh mediaWe pay the postage home

The faults we see most

  • Read speed sets the schedule: a healthy large disk clears the imager within a few hours, but a drive that keeps trying to read the same worn sectors at a few megabytes a second can occupy it for days. After this, it's purely a matter of scheduling.
  • Money buys position, not physics: your fee determines where your drive sits in the queue, and it is worked without being set aside. No fee produces a donor that nobody stocks, and however much you pay, it will not persuade a failing sector to read faster.
  • A stated deadline changes the read order: we read the sectors beneath the folders you have named first. This means those files are verified and sent back to you ahead of everything else.
  • An untouched drive is the quickest drive: one that arrives already powered down, with no software run on it and no rebuild attempted, is routinely finished days sooner than one that has been tampered with.

Five main factors set the timescale: the type of failure (which component failed), the amount of data to be read in terabytes, the condition of the platter surfaces, whether a suitable donor is in stock, and previous attempts at repairing the drive. None of these change for urgency. This website lists our opening hours; it does not imply that the building is staffed around the clock. Priority jobs from Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall are worked right through the day we are open, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, receive a diagnosis on the day they arrive, and are given a completion date once one can be stated honestly.

A job out of the casebook.

PL · PLY-2026-0803FILED ✓

Down on Monday, the Penzance haulier was taking bookings again by Thursday

As a priority job it went to the front of the queue on the first call, which mattered, because a rebuild was still under way when the phone rang. The array was left exactly as it stood. Each member disk was copied separately, and the volume was worked out again from those copies rather than from the disks. The database opened cleanly and the booking system was back up and running by Thursday midday.

Business back up in 4 daysPriority job

Before you seal the box.

Get these done

  • Say 'business down', or tell us the date you need it by
  • Switch off the failed machine and do not turn it back on
  • Have the person who signs off the cost available
  • Send all disks with their bay numbers marked on them, dead disks included

What to avoid

  • Doing another rebuild while you make up your mind
  • Believing a company that says it will cure your head crash by tomorrow morning
  • Waiting until tomorrow when a call today reserves the bench
  • Splitting the disks between two labs

Questions that come up most weeks.

In practice, how quick is an urgent job?

It really does depend on what broke. If the mechanics are good and the damage is logical, priority jobs are often done within a day or two. Arrays take longer, and so do drives with failing heads. The pace is set by the imager: a worn sector gives up its data at its own rate, regardless of how much you pay. You'll get a true figure once we've inspected the drive, never before.

Is there a night shift?

No. Be wary of any company suggesting that head swaps carry on unattended once the building closes. Here 'priority' simply means that your drive holds the front of the bench and is worked non-stop through every hour we are open, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. A published timetable is worth more than any badge.

Will you name a date before you see it?

No. Anybody who gives you a date before inspection is guessing. With a physical fault, the condition of the surfaces and whether a donor is available anywhere both matter, and neither can be judged over the phone. Instead you get three things: first place in the queue, an assessment completed on the day it arrives, and a real date as soon as one can honestly be given.

Is priority charged extra?

Yes. Having your drive placed at the top of the list costs something. That cost is shown on the single written quote, so you see it before agreeing to anything. The diagnosis stays free either way.

Pages people open after this.

More than one disk → A halted server → NAS drives → All the media we take →

A drive that stays switched off gets no worse.

Diagnosis costs nothing. We give you a report listing which files can be read, which cannot, and what is needed to get them off. Do not connect the drive until then.

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