EX9 · the Otter estuary · Budleigh Salterton
Data recovery, Budleigh Salterton. The photographs, the family tree and the memoir are on one ageing laptop.
Budleigh Salterton is a small resort located at the mouth of the River Otter; it has a population of approximately 5,240 (census 2021), a steep beach of pebblestones from the Triassic period, and one of the oldest populations in England. A family's photo archive, genealogy research and memoir are stored either on one old laptop or on various external hard drives in a drawer, and the person who created the collection might not still be around to give the password. Care organisations record their employees' work rotas and patients' medication records on a computer in an office without any IT support staff. The local literary festival, the museum housed in a thatched cottage on Fore Street, and the town's music scene have all catalogued and recorded their respective collections on volunteers' own personal computers. Photographers shooting images along the beach and in the estuary retain the only copies of the RAW files for their photographs in a damp studio. No repairs are done locally, and as the train line was closed down in 1967 and now forms part of the cycle path to Exmouth, once a quote has been obtained a failed drive will usually travel by tracked postal service: from Budleigh it would take the A3052 or A376 to the M5 motorway at Junction 30, and then head north to our intake laboratory in Bristol, where we diagnose it for free upon receipt; alternatively you can drop your drive off there yourself, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed.
Talk it over with an engineer
0800 6890668
Five things that fail in EX9.
Not there? Head for the triage →| What's wrong | Why it's common locally | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| Laptop from a retired household with a lifetime of photos and the family history | Nearly half the town are in their retirement years, and this archive sits on an old single unit with no backup | Just stop rebooting it; leave it turned off, get a quote first, then post just the hard disk (with any passwords you have) |
| A care agency office desktop that won't start on a Monday | Home-care agencies and care homes use rotas, care plans and drug record entries, all stored on one PC without an IT department | Off at the wall first, then call us and let us know the rotas are on it |
| External hard disk belonging to an individual volunteer, storing a local museum's catalogue (and/or) recordings of events for a local festival | A volunteer-run museum, a literary festival and a busy music scene all store their archive information on people's home computers | Do not use a repair utility; note what was stored on it, then get a quote first and send it |
| A land-college student had placed the entire dissertation on a small USB stick and hadn't saved it anywhere else | Dissertations and equine and animal-management records are carried back and forth on sticks and phones between Bicton and home | Don't format it when the PC says 'format'; get a quote first, then box it up small and post it |
| An estate agent's or solicitor's office server with another amber light (that's two) | Retirement property keeps a whole succession of small professional firms in this town, each firm using one old server with all the client files | Shut it off; get a quote first, then remove each disk drive, label each disk with its bay number, and send the dead one too |
From EX9 to the bench and home again.
Next to Budleigh Salterton.
Each town we cover →Four questions from EX9.
Which places does this Budleigh Salterton page cover?
All of EX9 (Budleigh Salterton itself, East Budleigh and Otterton up the Otter valley, Bicton and Ladram Bay) and all the lanes from there to Newton Poppleford and Woodbury. Exmouth, Sidmouth and Ottery St Mary each have their own page as well, however it is the same service: after a quote, the drive will be posted or dropped off at the Bristol intake laboratory (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed), where the free diagnosis will take place.
Is there anywhere in Budleigh Salterton to hand a drive over?
No, we have deliberately avoided this for Budleigh, as there is no counter in Budleigh and nobody to collect your drives; there is also no van for collection. All work carried out will be done from one single laboratory, Bristol Data Recovery at Castlemead, located at Lower Castle Street in Bristol (BS1 3AG). Get a quote first via telephone or through the quotation request form, then send the drive via Special Delivery of Royal Mail, or use any courier service which will track it to ensure safe delivery, or take it to Castlemead in person, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. The recovered data will be returned to you at our cost regardless of how it was delivered.
My late father's laptop holds the family photographs and nobody knows his password. Can anything be done?
Generally, yes. The disk is imaged read-only, so while we cannot log into it directly through the user's account, all of the photos, the family history files and the documents are still read directly from the copied version. However, what matters here is whether or not the data was encrypted (by means of BitLocker on a Windows machine or FileVault on a Mac), and for that we need the recovery key, which is often located in his Microsoft or Apple account. Do not continue to attempt to guess passwords at the computer; keep the power disconnected and then, after a quote, send just its hard drive with any additional information and/or keys you can locate (storage soldered to the board, such as that found on T2 or Apple silicon Macs, will not be accepted, so if you're not sure which kind it has, ring us first).
We run a care agency in Budleigh and the office PC with the rotas and MAR sheets will not start. What happens this morning?
Take the power off at the wall, phone us for your quote and tell us you are delivering care through that machine: once an organisation stops, we will put your case at the top of our list as soon as your parcel arrives. We treat care plans and medication records as personal information, so the drive will be tracked and insured (alternatively drop it off at the Bristol intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed); we work with it under a reference number, using read-only versions we create, and delete these thirty days after the drive goes back home. Get written confirmation of the fixed price prior to making any decision.
More like this in the casebook.
From the Otter to Bristol is usually one tracked parcel.
Shut it down. Say what you think happened. Take no decision until the free diagnosis comes back.