Emergency jobs · priority handling
Around Hull a stoppage costs in different currencies. A ship agent in the Old Town has papers to hand over before the 20:30 Rotterdam sailing. A haulage office on Hedon Road has drivers waiting on a manifest. Priority here means one thing: your job sits at the top of the order of work. Anything that comes in marked urgent is opened on arrival, assessed the same day, and put on the imager ahead of the rest for every hour the lab is open.
An engineer will take the details
0800 6890668
| What you see | What the fault is | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| The server the whole business runs on has stopped | Every disk imaged first, the array rebuilt from those images — always priority | Lead with 'business down' |
| A rebuild stopped halfway and nothing has been touched since | Right call — each retry eats into what is left | Keep it off and phone us |
| The data is needed by a fixed date | A payroll run, a tribunal, a sailing — the bench works backwards from it | Give us the date up front |
| The only copy of the family pictures has died | Family photographs get the same priority here as a company server | Either way you get it straight |
| Filenames are changing in front of you | Contain it, keep the evidence intact, then recover | Pull out the network cable; leave the power alone |
Each item that arrives gets a case number the day it lands. An engineer looks at it and finds the real fault, and that costs you nothing. You are told in plain terms which files can come off the drive and which cannot. A price follows — one figure, written down. No work starts until you have seen it and agreed to it.
Two words do it — business down — or name the date you are up against. That call alone marks the job urgent, raises its case number and books bench time, all before the parcel has left you.
The box is opened and the fault found the same day. Imaging then runs start to finish, ahead of every other drive on the shelf. Ring as often as you like; the engineer holding the job will tell you where it has got to.
Once the files you named at the outset open properly, the data goes out — encrypted transfer, new media posted out, or collected in person from Leeds.
You are not billed while you are still thinking. The list of what came off the drive goes to you first, and the invoice waits on your word. Files go home on media bought in for the job, with the postage back on us. We keep the job open until you have opened them on your own machine.
Five things set the timescale: which component went, how many terabytes need reading, the condition of the platter surfaces, whether the right donor is on the shelf, and what was tried before the drive was posted. Urgency moves none of them. What this page publishes is opening hours, not a badge claiming the lights never go off. Priority jobs from Hull and the East Riding run straight through the working day — Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — are diagnosed the same day they land, and given a firm date the moment an honest one exists.
A rebuild was already running when the call came in. That was the awkward part. Nothing on the array itself was touched. Each disk was imaged separately, and the array was reassembled in software from those images alone. The database checked out. The booking system was taking work again by Thursday lunchtime. The job went in front of everything else the moment the phone rang.
That turns on what has failed. If the mechanics are sound and the damage is logical, a priority job is often finished inside a day or two. Arrays take longer, and so do drives with failing heads. The imager sets the pace, and a worn sector reads at whatever speed it reads at, whatever the fee. A real figure comes after we have looked, not before.
No. Be wary of any firm implying head swaps carry on unattended after the building has emptied. Priority here means your drive sits at the front of the bench, worked with no pauses for every hour we are open, which here means Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. Opening hours say more than a badge does.
No. Anyone who does so without seeing the drive is guessing. A physical fault turns on the condition of the surfaces, and on whether the right donor exists at all; neither of those can be judged down a phone line. What you do get: the head of the queue, a diagnosis before that day is out, and a firm date once there is an honest one to give.
Yes. Your drive goes in front of everyone else's work, and that has a price. The figure appears on the single written quote we send, so you can see it before you agree to anything. The diagnosis is free regardless.
Leave it switched off. A failing drive has a limited number of starts in it, and each one spends a little more. The free diagnosis will say which files can be read.