Urgent jobs · front of the bench
Around Plymouth a stoppage is paid for in different currencies. A shipping agent at Millbay has paperwork due before a Roscoff crossing. A haulage yard out at Langage has drivers standing about while a manifest is missing. Priority means exactly one thing here: your job goes to the top of the work order. Anything arriving marked urgent is opened as it lands, assessed before that day closes, and then takes the imager in front of everything else.
You will be talking to an engineer
0800 6890668
| What shows up | What that points to | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The server the firm depends on has stopped | All disks imaged first, then the array rebuilt from those copies — always priority | Open with 'business down' |
| A rebuild that stopped midway, and nothing touched since | Correct — every retry takes more of what remains | Leave it off and ring |
| There is a fixed date for the data | Payroll, a tribunal, a sailing — the bench plans back from the date | Tell us the date first |
| The family photographs existed nowhere else and the disk is dead | Household photographs rank here alongside a company server | You get a straight answer either way |
| File names are altering as you watch | Contain first, preserve the evidence, recover after | Unplug the network lead; do not touch the power |
Whatever arrives is booked in under a case number on the day it reaches the bench. An engineer then works out the actual fault, and that part is free. You get a plain answer on what can come off the drive and what cannot, followed by one price in writing. Nothing further happens until you have read it and agreed.
Two words are enough — business down — or just give the date you are working to. That single call flags the job urgent, raises a case number and sets aside bench time, all before your parcel has even been posted.
The box gets opened and the fault identified within the day. Imaging then runs through from start to finish, before any other drive waiting its turn. Call whenever you like; whoever is holding the job will say how far along it is.
As soon as the files you named at the start open properly, the data leaves us — by encrypted transfer, on fresh media through the post, or picked up in person at Bristol.
Thinking it over costs you nothing. Everything the drive gave up is listed for you before any invoice exists, and the bill only follows your go-ahead. Files travel back on media bought in for your job, with return carriage paid at this end, and the case stays on the bench until you confirm they open on your own computer.
Five things set the timescale: which component failed, the number of terabytes that must be read, the state of the platter surfaces, whether a matching donor sits in stock, and what was tried before the drive went in the post. None of those move for urgency. What gets published here is a set of opening times, not a badge implying the building is staffed round the clock. Priority jobs out of Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall are worked right through the day we are open, Monday to Friday from 9am until 5:30pm, diagnosed on the day they land, and given a completion date once one can be stated honestly.
It went to the top of the bench list on the first call, which mattered, because a rebuild was already turning when the phone rang. The array itself was left exactly as it stood. Each member disk was copied on its own, and the volume was worked out again from those copies rather than from the disks. The database opened clean, and the booking system was live again by Thursday lunchtime.
It depends what has broken. Where the mechanics are healthy and the damage is logical, priority work is frequently done within a day or two. Arrays run longer, and so do disks whose heads are going. Pace is set by the imager: a worn sector gives up its data at its own speed, and no fee alters that. A genuine figure comes once we have looked, never in advance.
No. Treat with suspicion any firm hinting that head swaps continue unsupervised once the building is empty. Priority here means your drive holds the front of the bench, worked without pause through every hour we are open — Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. A published timetable is worth more than any badge.
No. Anybody quoting a date sight unseen is guessing. With a physical fault everything rests on the state of the surfaces and on whether a matching donor exists anywhere; neither can be judged over the phone. You are given three things instead: first place in the queue, an assessment finished on the day it lands, and a real date as soon as one can honestly be given.
Yes. Putting your drive ahead of everybody else's carries a cost. That cost is printed on the single written quote, where you can see it before agreeing to anything. The diagnosis stays free either way.
The diagnosis is free, and it comes back as a list: which files read, which do not, and what getting them off would take. Until then, leave the drive unplugged.