EX14 · High Street to Heathpark · Honiton
Honiton data recovery. The A303 ends here; the drive goes on up the A30 and M5 to Bristol.
Honiton is a market town of approximately 11,300 residents (2021 census, civil parish), located at the southern foot of the Blackdown Hills and on the River Otter. Following two fires in 1747 and 1765, Honiton's Georgian High Street was rebuilt. Since February 2019, Blackdown House, located on Heathpark, has been home to East Devon District Council. In 2024–25 the railway station on the Waterloo line recorded 337,040 entries and exits. The A303 terminates in Honiton, while the A30 runs on as a dual carriageway towards Exeter. The missing data is working data: Sage software and CAD designs stored on a single tower PC in a Heathpark unit; a feed rep's laptop that fell from their hands when getting out of the van; a shop's EPOS and eBay transactional history stored on an older desktop computer purchased ten years ago; pattern scans on a lace-maker's home laptop; batch records and label artwork stored on a small NAS. There are no counters to hand these items to, as there is no counter in Honiton. Once a quote has been provided, tracked and insured postal delivery will transport your drive to the Bristol laboratory, which will look at it free of charge upon receipt; or you may personally deliver it to the laboratory, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, without an appointment.
Talk it over with an engineer
0800 6890668
What fails in Honiton, and the first move.
Not there? Head for the triage →| What's wrong | Why it's common locally | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| The tower PC for a Heathpark unit will not boot up to the login screen | Heathpark workshops use one tower per site (CAD, job cards, Sage), which is kept in a cold unit | Off at the wall, no repair discs, then call us |
| A feed rep's laptop that fell when exiting the van | The livestock trade runs in vans with vets, feed reps and contractors, and laptops are regularly dropped in the A30 corridor | Leave it switched off; after a drop the heads have been damaged |
| It is taking forever for a High Street retail business's desktop to open its till | An independent retailer uses EPOS and stock control, and has listed items on eBay for years, using the same desktop they have used since opening | Image it before it completely fails to read anything |
| A two-bay NAS held by a brewery or food manufacturer, containing batch records, recipes and label art | A brewery or a food manufacturing company stores all batch history data on a mirrored pair of disks, and no one has reviewed these since they were set up | Request a quote before sending in the drives; pull both drives (or send the whole NAS if they won't come out), mark each drive by which bay it came from, and never ever press rebuild |
| The lace-maker's laptop has stopped working completely, pattern scans and all | Honiton lace has always been made in homes, and the Honiton lace makers, teachers and volunteer cataloguers who continue to work with this type of lace are still using home-based laptops with their scan files stored locally | Do not press the power button again, and do not allow anyone to reinstall Windows |
Honiton to the Bristol bench, and back.
Four questions Honiton asks first.
Is there a counter in Honiton I can bring a drive to?
No, and that's intentional: we do every single task from just one well-equipped lab, and we never open anything in either Honiton or Exeter. First get a price quote (by phone or using our form); next package your drive in a strong box which has padding around all sides, and send it via Royal Mail Special Delivery or by trackable courier to the lab at Castlemead, Lower Castle Street, BS1 3AG (Bristol Data Recovery's, located right in the heart of the city). It is perfectly acceptable to simply drop off your drive there if you're already travelling north on the M5, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, without making an appointment. The return leg is paid by us.
Which places around Honiton do you take drives from?
All of EX14 and its surrounding villages: Heathpark and the adjacent business park off the A30, Luppitt and Dunkeswell at the top end in the Blackdown Hills, Feniton along the railway line, and Sidbury as part of a route into Sidmouth. Ottery St Mary, Axminster, Cullompton, Sidmouth and Seaton each also have an individual page. Regardless of where within East Devon you post from, the cost and waiting time will be exactly the same.
The only high-resolution files of my work are on one external drive, and it has stopped showing up. Can they come back?
Usually, and the first principle of troubleshooting for the drive is to just unplug it. If an external that will not mount up is due to a mechanical failure inside, then this will get worse with each power cycle, and work on the bench will be required. When we receive your drive, the free diagnosis on arrival will determine if the issue was with the USB bridge (easy) or if there is a mechanical problem. A single drive will cost £300 + VAT, and the TIFFs and RAW files for an exhibition come back on a list, which should be checked by you prior to payment.
My work laptop failed on the train to Waterloo and IT want it back. Can you get my files off it first?
Yes, once quoted, for drives that are yours to send; or alternatively, your IT department can post the drive independently. The drive alone will be sent to us (never the laptop); storage soldered to the board is not taken on, so if you are unsure what type of storage your laptop has, ring us before sending. When received by us it is imaged in a read-only state, therefore the drive returns to you exactly as it left. For BitLocker-encrypted drives we require the recovery key, which is held by your IT department. The cost of one drive is £300 + VAT. Diagnosis is at no cost. Once the drive is returned to you, thirty days later our working copy is deleted.
More like this in the casebook.
Get a quote, then post it from Honiton; the answer comes back the same way.
Shut it down. Say what you think happened. Take no decision until the free diagnosis comes back.