TA24 · under North Hill · Minehead
Data recovery, Minehead. Seafront, harbour or Exmoor farm, the drive goes by tracked post to Bristol.
Minehead sits under North Hill on the Bristol Channel, just outside the Exmoor National Park boundary: a parish of 11,752 at the 2021 census, Alcombe and Woodcombe included, retirees a large share of them. The South West Coast Path starts at the marker on the seafront, Butlin's has taken guests since 26 May 1962, and the West Somerset Railway runs heritage trains from a station that has had no mainline service since 1971. The work that reaches us is as seasonal as the town: the booking laptop from a holiday let, an arcade's CCTV recorder, a farmhouse machine on the Exmoor side with the flock records and the scheme evidence, a volunteer's external drive of scanned railway photographs, and the only copies of a lifetime's pictures on a retired couple's laptop. Salt air, damp and winter power cuts finish old machines here, and the busy months are when nobody backs anything up. There is no counter in Minehead and nobody collects. Put the drive in a rigid box and send it tracked to our Bristol lab; when it lands, the diagnosis costs nothing.
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What breaks in Minehead, in season and out.
Not there? Head for the triage →| What's wrong | Why it's common locally | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| A holiday-let owner's laptop with the booking calendar, the guest ledger and ten years of property photographs | Lets, guest houses and caravan sites here run the whole season from one machine behind reception, and July is when nobody backs up | Don't try it again; give us the changeover date when you ring and the case is flagged |
| A seafront arcade's CCTV recorder that would not play back in August | The cafés and arcades along the front run tills and cameras on the cheapest hard drives, in salt air, all summer | Off at the wall, disk left in the box, and write down the dates you need |
| A farmhouse PC above the town with the flock and herd records and the scheme evidence | Exmoor's hill farms keep pony-herd registers and years of environmental-scheme photographs on one machine in the kitchen | Switch it off at the socket; post the whole tower or pull the drive — either travels |
| A volunteer's external drive holding decades of scanned railway and harbour photographs | The heritage line's volunteers and the town's historians keep locomotive records and scans on home drives, and one copy is the norm | Unplug it and post it as it is; never open the case |
| A coach firm's office PC with the season's rotas and every invoice since the spring | Cleaners, laundries, coach operators and entertainment agencies live off the resort's season and run the paperwork on one machine | Leave it off; tell us when wages or the VAT return are due and the queue is worked round it |
Where a Minehead drive goes, and what comes back.
Next to Minehead.
Each town we cover →Asked from Minehead, answered from Bristol.
Do you cover Dunster, Porlock, Watchet and the Exmoor villages, or only Minehead itself?
All of them — TA24 and the coast either side of it: Minehead with Alcombe and Woodcombe, Dunster under its castle, Porlock along the A39, Watchet and Williton down the coast, and the farms and villages on the Somerset side of Exmoor. It is all Somerset Council territory now; West Somerset survives as the name of the railway, the college and the newspaper, not as a council. Taunton, Tiverton and Barnstaple have pages of their own, as does Bridgwater. Wherever it starts, the route is the same: tracked post to the Bristol lab, and we pay the way back.
We lose power here most winters, and after the last cut the laptop with all our photographs would not start again. Are they gone?
Almost certainly not. A cut, and the surge when the supply comes back, tends to damage the laptop's power circuitry or the drive's board, and the platters keep what was on them. What does the harm is trying it again and again, so stop now: leave it off, don't open it or swap the board, and post the whole laptop or just the drive. It comes in as one drive at £300 + VAT, the diagnosis before that is free, and you tell us what matters most — the wedding scans, the children in the seventies — so those folders are checked first.
The chart plotter on our boat says the card is blank, and the season's marks and the engine log were on it. Is that recoverable?
Usually, yes. 'Blank' from a plotter normally means the card's file table can no longer be read, not that the data has gone. Do not let the plotter format it, do not put it in a laptop and click through the repair prompts, and keep it dry in a rigid box until it is posted. A card comes in at £250 + VAT, the diagnosis before that costs nothing, and corroded contacts from a season of salt air are an ordinary bench job.
Do you have a counter in Minehead, or does everything go by post?
Everything goes by post, on purpose. There is no counter in Minehead, no van and nobody who collects — one lab with the equipment in it is worth more than a shopfront on the seafront. Send it tracked and insured (Special Delivery from Royal Mail does the job) to the Castlemead building on Lower Castle Street, Bristol, BS1 3AG, where Bristol Data Recovery is the name on the door; or, if you happen to be passing on a weekday, hand it in at that door yourself. A case number is yours once it is booked in, the diagnosis is free, and the return post is ours.
More like this in the casebook.
Between Minehead and a written answer: one tracked parcel up the A39.
Turn it off, say what happened, and hold any decision until the free diagnosis is back.