NG31, NG32 and NG33 · Grantham
Grantham data recovery. Twenty years on, the file still has to open; it is usually on one disk, with no copy.
A memory card or a USB stick is £250 plus VAT. One hard disk is £300 plus VAT. Put several disks in the job — a RAID set, a NAS, a server — and it starts at £500 plus VAT. Finding out which of those bands applies to you costs nothing. Published prices matter more here than in a city, because Grantham runs on small firms with no IT department and very long-lived records. Väderstad on Ellesmere Business Park holds CAD, embedded control software and dealer service files for machines that will still want parameter support twenty years from now. Magnavale's cold stores at Easton and Moy Park at Gonerby Hill Foot stand on temperature logs and traceability packs, where a gap in the record is a gap in the licence to sell. Grantham Book Services has been shifting other people's titles since 1975 and carries half a century of catalogue and pick data behind it. Around them are land agents, agricultural valuers, solicitors and accountants strung along the A1, most of them running one small server in a first-floor office. The town also built the first successful running diesel engine, in 1892 — Richard Hornsby & Sons, whose later merger into Ruston & Hornsby makes Grantham and the Lincoln turbine works two branches of one industrial family. There is no counter in Grantham and none in Nottingham. Hand the parcel over at a post office counter, tracked and insured. Looking costs nothing, and the price is written down before anything chargeable happens.
Ask an engineer, and the first look is free
0115 8220606
What comes in from around here.
Not yours? Open the fault finder →| What is happening | What brings it in | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| A land agent's laptop that will not wake up | Tenancy files and valuations going back generations, all on the one machine | Leave it powered down and post the disk on its own |
| The drive with the scanned deeds on it, now clicking | Twenty years of paperwork that nobody has copied elsewhere | That noise is damage. Cut the power now |
| A cold-store PC that hangs before it finishes starting | Temperature logs and traceability packs an auditor will ask for | Send the disk before anyone tries to fix the PC |
| A tack-room NAS that will no longer mount | Everything the office works from is inside that one box | Unplug it at the wall and post the whole unit, disks in |
| A sale-day card the camera now reads as empty | The card was pulled while the camera was still writing | Do not put it back in the camera; post the card as it is |
Before the parcel goes anywhere.
Questions from Grantham.
Is a job from an NG33 village dearer than one in town?
No. Grantham pays exactly what everywhere else pays, off one published list. Nothing is charged for the first look; after it comes a single written figure, and that figure holds. Cards and USB sticks are £250 + VAT. One hard disk is £300 + VAT. Multi-disk work — RAID, NAS, servers — opens at £500 + VAT, and CCTV or DVR recorders come in at £400 + VAT. On most jobs, an unsuccessful recovery is not billed.
There are clients' papers on that disk. Who gets to see them?
Your disk is read, never written to. The first step is a read-only image, and every attempt afterwards is made against the copy, so the disk goes home in the condition it turned up in. Your firm's name is not on the docket — a case number is — and an engineer opens no file that the recovery does not need. Thirty days after your drive has gone back, any copy still sitting here is deleted, and the privacy policy states all of it in full.
The office NAS upstairs will not mount. Do we take the lid off?
Do not open it. A NAS is sent to us as one unit, disks left in place, and that is the safest way for one to travel; switch it off at the wall so it stops retrying, and let nobody run a rebuild. With a server or a RAID set it is the other way about: the disks come out, and each is labelled with where it sat in the chassis. Ring us before a chassis comes apart.
How does a drive reach the bench from Grantham?
Post it. There is no counter in Grantham, and none in Nottingham, so the parcel does the travelling. Handed over tracked and insured at a post office in the town, it is usually logged on the bench the following working morning. Send the disk by itself rather than the whole computer. Nobody pays for the first look, and we cover the postage home.
Start here if the same thing is happening to yours.
Next door to Grantham, on the same terms
Post it from Grantham and the figure comes to you in writing.
Leave it switched off — each further restart only makes the job harder. When you ring, say what the drive was doing at the point it stopped. The look costs you nothing; the figure that follows arrives in writing, and until you have agreed it, nothing chargeable is done.