TQ5 · harbour to Berry Head · Brixham
Data recovery in Brixham. The auction is online; the paperwork behind it is on one PC.
The southernmost town in the three towns under Torbay Council, as well as being the fishing port amongst the three, is Brixham: 16,825 people lived in Brixham (as per the 2021 census), and beam trawlers and inshore boats are based in the harbour. A market exists which is operated by Brixham Trawler Agents, who claim it to be England's largest fish market by value of fish sold (£77 million in 2025). The auction for this market is online, and most surrounding elements will remain offline. Merchants and processors on the quay will store stock, traceability and invoice information on a single office PC. Skippers will use their boat laptop (which has years of marks and catch record information), which resides in salt air and vibration. Tenants of the Brixham Laboratory at Freshwater Quarry have monitoring datasets stored on small NAS boxes. Surveyors will retain boat reports and photographs with no second copy. The retired population is large in Brixham and retains family history on old desktop computers. No rail link existed after 1963 and, similarly, we do not have a counter here. After a quote, tracked post carries a failed drive along the A3022, A380 and A38 to the M5 and up to the lab in Bristol, or you can drop off your drive there, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed, and when it arrives at our lab the diagnosis is free.
Talk it over with an engineer
0800 6890668
What fails in Brixham, quay to Berry Head.
Not there? Head for the triage →| What's wrong | Why it's common locally | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| A boat laptop which has failed to boot, with years of marks on it | The beam-trawler and inshore fishing fleets keep all the data (plotter cards, logbook exports, quota records) together on a single computer that operates in an environment of salt air and vibrations | Leave it off and do not post the entire unit. First, obtain a quote. Then post only its drive and include the plotter card in the same box with the drive |
| A merchant office PC located on the quay will stop at a blank screen | Although the auction is operating "in the cloud", the inventory, traceability and billing information for the companies surrounding it reside on a single ageing tower | Don't reinstall Windows, and say the business is no longer running |
| A two-bay NAS located inside a Freshwater Quarry unit (one drive reported as failed) | The laboratory's tenants store environmental data sets and shellfish-farm telemetry on small boxes that have no backup copy elsewhere | Shut it down. Get a quote first. Pull both drives, label each drive to indicate which bay it belongs in, and send both. Alternatively you can send the whole NAS if the drives will not come out of the enclosure |
| A CCTV recorder from a harbourside restaurant or guesthouse | Many of the harbourside businesses such as guesthouses and restaurants operate with very basic equipment for their tills, booking systems and cameras. The recorder will use an internal hard drive which automatically overwrites recordings on a loop when full | Unplug it prior to the deletion cycle reaching the date range you need, then write the dates down for future reference |
| A volunteer's decades of guillemot counts recorded on their personal USB drive | The heritage museum, and the team of volunteers who complete the Berry Head survey, have stored their scanned archival records and survey spreadsheets on end-user hard drives | Do not continue to use it. Get a price quote first, then send it along as it is: the £250 + VAT band |
From Brixham to the bench, and back again.
Close to Brixham.
Our whole patch →What Brixham asks before it posts.
Is there a counter in Brixham I can walk into?
No, and that's an intentional decision, as the funds go directly into one laboratory and its equipment, not into counters. First get a quote either by telephone or via our quotation form. Then a Brixham drive will go through a tracked postal service from your nearest Post Office branch, or you can arrange a collection via a courier of your choice and they will collect it at your doorstep (we do not offer collections). Alternatively, if you wish to deliver it in person, the intake lab in Bristol (Castlemead, Lower Castle Street, BS1 3AG) accepts drop-offs Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. In all cases the diagnostic test performed when received is free and the return postage costs are also covered.
Which places around Brixham do you cover?
Every single TQ5 address: the harbour and the town, Berry Head, and then on out to Churston and Galmpton. The areas around Paignton and Torquay are each on separate pages of this website, and so too is the Dartmouth area that lies further along the coastline, however it is worth noting that there will be no difference in service between these areas. Brixham is Torbay Council's southern town, and despite the change in postcode there are no differences in the free diagnosis, the price bands or the paid return.
The boat laptop will not start, and years of marks are on it. Can they be got back?
Yes, normally. Files such as marks, exports of the electronic logbook, and catch and quota records are similar to all other types of files. What is different about them is where they have been living, with your laptop on the working boat, and this would be something worth mentioning at the time of contacting us. Also, do not attempt to use it again on shore power. First get a quote for this service, then send us just the drive of the laptop (storage soldered onto the main board is not taken on, so if you are unsure whether your laptop uses a type of storage that is removable or not, ring us prior to sending it), and if the marks are also on the plotter card, please include this card in the same package as well: a card will cost £250 + VAT, a laptop drive will cost £300 + VAT, and you will receive our free diagnosis prior to either.
Our shellfish telemetry sits on a two-bay NAS that now reports a failed disk. Swap it and rebuild?
No. There is no quicker way to lose the data on the other disk than rebuilding onto a new drive. Turn everything off, get a quote first, then remove both disks and label each with the bay in which they are located. Post them as bare disks (the "failed" disk as well); only send the whole unit if either disk will not come out. The bench will read each one and rebuild the volume from images. Anything with two or more disks is from £500 + VAT.
More like this in the casebook.
Get a quote, then post it from Brixham; the answer comes back the same way.
Shut it down. Say what you think happened. Take no decision until the free diagnosis comes back.