LN1 to LN6, Teal Park and North Hykeham · Lincoln
Data recovery, Lincoln. An amber light on the NAS; every model and test file on it exists in one place only.
Some data gets exactly one chance a year. At Riseholme, north of the city, the University of Lincoln runs a 200-hectare agri-robotics estate — polytunnels, a robotic strawberry trial, a walled garden used for vision-guided weed detection, large trial fields of wheat, beans and linseed, a 5G mast and a flux tower — and everything it produces is tied to a growing season that will not come round again. Drone and tractor imagery, LiDAR point clouds, yield maps, soil and canopy sensor logs: the crop goes in the ground once. The other anchor is older and heavier. Siemens Energy Industrial Turbomachinery, on Teal Park Road at North Hykeham, LN6 3AD, employs more than 1,200 people and is the UK's only industrial gas turbine manufacturer, descended from Ruston & Hornsby — and an overhaul record follows a machine for decades after the design work behind it has stopped existing anywhere else. Around them sit Dynex's process and test data, Bifrangi, James Dawson & Son, three higher-education institutions including a school of engineering founded with Siemens in 2009, and the ordinary layer of solicitors, accountants, surveyors and architects that a cathedral city keeps busy. Lincoln has no counter and nothing is collected. Send it tracked; you pay nothing for the examination, and the price is settled on paper first: one hard disk £300 + VAT, a card or a stick £250 + VAT, RAID sets, NAS boxes and servers from £500 + VAT.
Ask an engineer, and the first look is free
0115 8220606
Five jobs the LN postcodes put on our bench.
Not yours? Open the fault finder →| What is happening | What brings it in | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| A four-bay NAS in a drawing office, one bay amber | The only copy of the CAD models and the test data | Power it down and post the unit as it is |
| A tower under a desk in a solicitor's back office | Client matters, the ledger and every scanned deed, on one disk | Keep it powered down and send just the drive |
| A yard DVR that no longer sees its own disk | One disk carrying every camera on the works gate, unbroken | Switch it off, lift the disk out, post that on its own |
| A practice management database that will not open | Time records, matter files and every scanned drawing | Stop switching it on and off; ring us first |
| The family external that has begun to click | A family's whole photograph collection, held nowhere else | Do not plug it in again — the clicking is doing damage |
Four things to settle before the parcel leaves Lincoln.
Four things Lincoln asks.
Do you cover the whole of Lincoln and the LN villages?
Every one of them. LN1 to LN6 takes in the city, North Hykeham and Teal Park, and runs out to Sturton, Cherry Willingham, Dunholme, Heighington and Bassingham. Nothing is picked up from anywhere, which is rather the point: an engineering office and a bungalow out in the villages use the same post office counter and are charged the same.
A disk has dropped out of the RAID set. Should we wait?
Power it off before you do anything else. What makes this one awkward is how normal it looks: a set short of one disk hands files over as though nothing had happened, so it is left alone until the second disk stops and everything halts at once. Start no rebuild. As each disk leaves the chassis put its bay number on it, the failed one included, then post the disks and nothing else. Multi-disk work begins at £500 + VAT.
Nobody can issue anything until it is back. Can you push it?
Two things change once a job is booked urgent. It is imaged ahead of what is already queued, and a single engineer carries it the whole way instead of fitting it between other work. Ask for that when you ring. You then get a completion date the moment the diagnosis will stand one up. Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm.
Can a drive be handed over anywhere in Lincoln?
It cannot — Lincoln has no counter and neither does Nottingham. Jobs book in at the intake lab, which is where the imaging rigs and donor shelves live, and a device can be handed in there on a weekday. Tracked, insured post is what nearly everybody uses instead. Looking costs nothing and we pay the leg home.
Start here if the same thing is happening to yours.
Next door to Lincoln, on the same terms
Box it up in Lincoln and let the parcel do the travelling.
Do not power it up again. What helps most is knowing what the machine was doing immediately before it stopped, so have that ready when you ring. The first look costs nothing. You then get one figure, in writing; until you have read that and agreed to it, nothing chargeable happens.