EX12 · Axmouth to Beer · Seaton
Data recovery, Seaton. The tram goes to Colyton; your drive goes to Bristol.
Seaton is situated on Lyme Bay and the River Axe runs into this bay. Seaton has one mile of shingle located between Axmouth and Beer, and a small harbour at the mouth of the estuary. In addition, there are approximately 7,700 residents who live in the parish of Seaton as of the 2021 census. The average age of residents living in Seaton is 54. After Seaton's railway closed in 1966, a tramway was constructed along the old railway bed and today serves over 100,000 passengers per year (by its own count) to travel to Colyford and Colyton. The type of work that we receive (only ever the drive unit itself and never the surrounding machine) fits well within the area: i.e., a booking laptop from a caravan park; a volunteer's PC with many years' worth of data collected in regards to the wetland bird counts; patient scheduling software used on a doctor's surgery desktop; drone aerial imagery and survey point clouds used on a contractor's portable SSD; and the family photos stored on an external hard drive that has resided in a seafront flat for ten winters. Salt air and moisture damage more drives in Seaton than in any other area of the district. There is no counter in Seaton and no person collects. Get a quote first, either via phone call or using the form provided, prior to sending a rigid box. The box can then be sent via Royal Mail Special Delivery or through use of any courier service that provides tracking information. Alternatively, you can hand-deliver the rigid box to the Bristol intake lab during business hours (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm). No appointment is needed. Upon receipt of the rigid box containing your damaged drive at our Bristol laboratory facility, we provide free-of-charge diagnostic services to determine if your damaged device may be recovered.
Talk it over with an engineer
0800 6890668
What fails in Seaton.
Not there? Head for the triage →| What's wrong | Why it's common locally | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| The caravan park's booking laptop won't turn on on changeover day | A season of bookings and guest records are kept on one machine, and there isn't another backup or duplicate | When you phone, say that booking has ceased; we open it the day it arrives |
| Old desktop for a surgery's appointment book | Desktops at GP, dental and care-home practices that were never replaced contain many years of patient scheduling data | We recover the data; your IT support rebuilds |
| A volunteer's home PC contains years' worth of wetland bird counts | There are volunteers at both the tramway and the wetlands. Their data is stored on private computers | Switch it off, get a quote first, then send only the bare drive |
| The contractor's portable SSD with the drone video that will no longer mount | Contractors survey the cliffs here: East Devon District Council re-armoured Seaton Hole in autumn 2025, and the contractors' point clouds live on pocket SSDs | Quit messing about using different ports; a missing SSD is bench work |
| Two-disk mirror in the drawing office that dropped a member months ago, with no replacement | The model railway trade depends upon tooling drawings, magazine layouts and mail-order records, and a "mirror" cannot function as a backup | Take out both disks, label the bays, get a quote first, then post them bare; do not rebuild |
From the Axe estuary to the bench.
Close to Seaton.
Our whole patch →What Seaton asks before it posts.
Do you cover Beer, Axmouth, Colyford and Colyton as well as Seaton?
Yes, all of EX12 and the entire Axe valley: Seaton, Beer (with the boats that are hauled up onto the beach), Axmouth, Colyford and Colyton, as well as the wetlands along the valley and the caravan sites surrounding Seaton. Sidmouth has a page of its own, as does Axminster, and also Lyme Regis in neighbouring Dorset. Your parcel travels the same way from every one of these locations.
A USB stick with a term's coursework on it has stopped showing up. Is it worth sending?
Yes, and this is also the cheapest job we do; a card or USB stick will be priced at £250 + VAT. The diagnosis costs nothing prior to this. So if you wish to see whether there are any recoverable files on your device before spending money, the diagnosis is free. Please do not continue to insert your failing device as with each attempt of insertion, you increase the likelihood of causing further damage to your failing storage device. Get a quote from us first, then please place your device in a padded envelope and enclose it in a small package; let us know the hand-in date, and we will endeavour to fit the work on your device around it where the job allows.
The family photographs are on an external drive from about 2014, and it now clicks when it spins up. Are the pictures gone?
Most of the time not. A click is a mechanical action. The head can't find its way to where the data lies and continues to look for it. There's nothing wrong with your pictures: they're still there. What will harm your pictures is every time you turn it on again. Simply unplug it. Don't open it up. And please do not allow anyone to plug it into another computer. It arrives as one drive (£300 + VAT), with the diagnosis free beforehand. You get to name the folders (the scanned prints, the grandchildren) so that we verify those before anything else.
Is there a counter in Seaton where I can hand it over?
No, and that is as it should be. No one will meet you at Seaton; nothing will be picked up from you and there won't be a van. Get your quote first, by phone or on-line using our quote form, then send it by tracked and insured post to the address of Bristol Data Recovery's lab: Castlemead, Lower Castle Street, Bristol, BS1 3AG. It doesn't matter if you happen to be heading that way yourself and you'd prefer to drop it off at the door during normal business hours, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. Regardless of which route you choose, they both end with a case number, a free diagnosis and return postage paid.
More like this in the casebook.
A quote, then one tracked parcel out of Seaton; one answer back.
Shut it down. Say what you think happened. Take no decision until the free diagnosis comes back.