EX7 · the Lawn, the Warren and Holcombe · Dawlish
Dawlish data recovery. Care rotas, park CCTV and family photographs, posted from EX7 and diagnosed free.
Dawlish parish had 15,257 people at the 2021 census, a sixth more than in 2011, and Teignbridge's local plan allocates 860 homes for the north-east edge, served by the new link road and bridge over the Shutterton Brook. Health and social work is the largest employment sector, 23 per cent, and the drives that fail here follow: a care manager's laptop with the rotas and medication records, a holiday-park recorder at the Warren holding the season's CCTV, a pocket drive from a new house at Secmaton Farm with every photograph since the first scan, and the ten-year-old external a retiree's desktop was backed up to, now clicking. Network Rail's contractors have worked the seafront since 2019 on the 800-metre wall of 2020 and 2023, built after the storm of February 2014 shut the line for eight weeks; site laptops full of drone footage get dropped. Nothing is handed over in the town. It goes tracked from your nearest Post Office branch, up the A379 past Starcross to Exeter and the M5 north to the intake lab in Bristol, where the diagnosis costs nothing.
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What breaks in Dawlish, and the first move for each.
Not there? Head for the triage →| What's wrong | Why it's common locally | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| A Warren park's CCTV recorder that stopped playing back in August | Lodges, pools and car parks feed one back-office NVR, writing all season | Unplug it today; while it runs it records over the clip you need |
| A care manager's laptop that will not start on a Monday | Care is the town's biggest sector; rotas and medication records go home on one laptop | No restarts and no repair tools; leave it switched off |
| A rugged laptop dropped on the sea-wall or link-road works | Sea-wall contractors and the link-road crews carry drone footage and surveys in the van | A drop is mechanical: power off, and post it as it is |
| A pocket drive from a new house at Secmaton Farm | Young families fill the new estates, every photo since the first scan on one drive | Stop plugging it in; each attempt wears a failing drive further |
| A shop's till PC from the Strand that took seawater in January 2026 | Seafront ground floors got wet; salt keeps working on a board long after it dries | Bag it damp and post it; no drying out and no switching on |
From EX7 to the Bristol bench: how a Dawlish case goes.
Close to Dawlish.
Our whole patch →What Dawlish asks before it posts.
Do you cover Dawlish Warren, Holcombe and Ashcombe, or only the town?
All of the EX7 post town: Dawlish itself, the Warren with its holiday parks and the nature reserve, Holcombe on the Teignmouth side and Ashcombe inland. Starcross up the estuary is EX6 and gets the same service. Teignmouth, Exmouth and Newton Abbot have pages of their own. What covers you is the postal service, so a parcel from any of these places reaches the same Bristol bench on the same terms.
Our care agency's laptop holds medication records and care notes. Can you take it, and who sees what is on it?
Yes. Laptops from care homes and domiciliary agencies are a regular Dawlish case, health and social work being the town's largest employment sector. The drive is imaged read-only, so nothing on it is changed, and the engineer works on that image under a case number. You check a list of what came back before any fee is due, the files go home with the drive, and thirty days after it has left us the working copies are deleted. Say when you ring that it holds care records, and name the folders that matter most.
The recorder at our holiday park has a season of CCTV on it and will not play back. Do we send the whole box?
You can. A CCTV recorder is £400 + VAT, and if you would rather not open it, post the unit as it is. If you are happy to take the disk out, the disk is all the bench needs; the recordings sit on that disk, not in the box around it. The plug matters more than either: while the recorder runs it records over its oldest video, so switch it off today, write down the dates and cameras you need, and say whether the export is for your own use, a claim or the police.
Is there a counter in Dawlish where I can hand a drive over?
No, on purpose: the work needs one properly equipped bench, not a shopfront in every town. From Dawlish you post the drive — Royal Mail Special Delivery at a Post Office branch, or a tracked courier collected from your door — and the lab's address is Castlemead, Lower Castle Street, in Bristol, BS1 3AG — Bristol Data Recovery. If handing it over in person suits you better, weekday drop-offs are taken there. A case number, a free diagnosis when it arrives and the return post paid come with either route.
More like this in the casebook.
Dawlish to Bristol is one Special Delivery. The rest of the way is ours.
Turn it off, say what happened, and hold any decision until the free diagnosis is back.