Urgent jobs · first onto the imager
Urgent means something you can check for yourself. The day your parcel reaches us, it is opened, the fault is given a name before the end of that day, and your drive gets to meet the imager before every other job in the queue. Published bands don't move because of urgency. For a single drive the price remains £300 + VAT; for arrays, NAS boxes and servers, it remains from £500 + VAT; and if a priority charge applies, it will be shown separately on the one quote you agree. A Worksop distributor who runs their entire business from a single server in the warehouse office, an editing suite in Nottingham with a card that won't mount, a Derby practice with Friday's payroll to process: each would do better to ring for a quote before posting.
Ask an engineer and the first look is free
0115 8220606
| What is happening | What usually causes it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| The server the whole firm depends on has stopped | Each disk cloned first, then the array rebuilt off the clones: always a priority job | Ring us before you post it |
| The rebuild was abandoned halfway and has been left alone since | Good decision: each attempt from here takes away more of what survives | Leave it powered down and call |
| There is a fixed date at the far end of this | Payroll, a tribunal, a despatch date: tell us yours and we plan the bench schedule back from it | Tell us the deadline up front |
| It held the only copies of the family photographs | A home archive is scheduled in the same way as a business server | Either way, you hear it straight |
| Filenames altering in front of you | Contain it, preserve what remains, then recover | Remove the network cable, but leave the power alone |
Your case number is assigned when the item is received. Then an engineer works out what went wrong (no charge). At this point, you receive a basic summary of which parts are recoverable and which are not. You also receive a single written quote for the price of the recovery. Accept the quoted price or turn it down, and there is no obligation to pay anything.
One sentence is enough: either the business has stopped, or there is a date I have to hit. On that call, bench time is allocated, a case number assigned and your job marked urgent, all while your parcel is still in your hands.
On the day it arrives, your box is opened and the fault identified. From there, cloning runs uninterrupted in one pass, ahead of all the jobs queued behind. Call any time. Whoever is holding your job will tell you where it has got to.
Your data leaves as soon as the files you nominated as the priority open and read correctly, either by encrypted transfer or on new media bought in by us and posted back to you at our expense.
A complete file list will be provided before any invoicing. Simply say "yes" or "no" to what we found: yes means it is billed, no means it is not, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. What we find is posted to you on media purchased specifically for your case, at no additional cost to you. We consider the process complete once you have opened those files yourself on your own computer.
Five different things affect how long the job takes, and none of them change simply because urgency has been paid for: which component failed, how many terabytes need to be imaged, what condition the platters are in, whether the right donor is already on our shelf, and how much was attempted before the drive was posted. This is why we print our opening hours on this page instead of a badge suggesting someone is working on your job after hours. Our hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. Priority parcels (from Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and all points in between) are opened as they arrive, worked through every staffed hour without a break, and given a completion date as soon as one can be stood behind.
We received a call on the Monday about a rebuild that was still running, so we moved the job forward. The first step was to cut the power to the array and stop using it. Each member was then imaged individually, and the rebuild was done from those images, never from the original drives. The database opened without error, and by the Thursday the firm was taking bookings again.
The fault decides it. When the problem is strictly logical and the mechanics are sound, priority work is normally complete within a day or two. An array takes longer, as does a drive with heads going out. After that, the imager determines everything: worn sectors release what they contain at their own speed, and no amount of money will speed up a single one of them. An engineer's evaluation comes before you are given an honest completion date. Not the opposite.
No. Any company that implies head swaps go on unsupervised after closing time is one to look at carefully. Priority buys one thing on this bench: a place at the top of the jobs list, and continuous work on your job during every hour that we are staffed. Our hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. Published hours you can test by phone are far better than a badge that nobody can check.
No. A date given sight unseen is nothing more than a guess wearing a suit. When the failure is physical, the answer depends on how the surfaces respond under the imager and whether a donor of the same model and generation can be found at all, and neither is a telephone question. Three things are promised instead: your job goes to the top of our list, an engineer's evaluation is done on the very day your parcel arrives, and once an honest completion date is available, it is given to you straight away.
Yes. Putting your drive at the front of the line carries an extra cost, shown on the one quote you agree, next to the recovery fee itself. Diagnosis is free whichever option you choose, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
The look costs nothing. It gives you a file listing of what opened and what did not, along with the cost of finishing the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Do not switch the drive on until you have that listing.