EX36 · Pathfields · the edge of Exmoor · South Molton
Data recovery, South Molton. Farm laptops and Pathfields servers go in the post; the first look is free.
South Molton is a market town of around 6,300 people on the River Mole, on Exmoor's southern edge, and it is North Devon Council's town, not Mid Devon's, although the Link Road runs east to the M5. Elizabeth I incorporated the borough in 1590 and it still sells sheep: Stags auctions around 1,200 prime lambs here every Thursday, and Mole Valley Farmers, the co-operative founded in the town in 1960, is still registered at Pathfields Business Park. The data that fails here is farm data — a flock register and medicine book on a laptop that took a knock in the Land Rover, a season of spray records on a tablet from a tractor cab, a feed merchant's ageing Windows server at Pathfields, thirty years of scanned parish registers on one external drive that has begun to click. The station closed in October 1966 and the A361 runs on its trackbed west of the town, so nothing changes hands here. Tracked post takes the drive east along the A361 to the M5 at Junction 27, then north to the Bristol lab; the first look at it there costs nothing.
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What fails around South Molton, from farmhouse to Pathfields.
Not there? Head for the triage →| What's wrong | Why it's common locally | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| A farmhouse laptop carrying the flock register, the ARAMS movement records and the medicine book | This is sheep country, and a laptop that rides in the Land Rover takes knocks a desk machine never sees | Stop restarting it; post the laptop or its drive with the power off |
| A contractor's tablet with the field maps, spray records and the season's invoices | It lives in a tractor cab from spring to harvest, and there is no second copy of the spray records anywhere | Do not charge or reset it; the whole tablet travels, switched off |
| A memory stick holding the milk-recording exports and the parlour computer's only backup | Dairies around South Molton back the parlour up to one stick, and it lives in a coat pocket until the day it opens slowly | Image it before it stops reading |
| A NAS at a Pathfields unit with a red light on one bay | Agricultural engineers, feed and seed merchants and a haulier run ageing Windows servers and a NAS nobody checks | Power it down, pull every disk, write its bay number on each, and never press rebuild |
| An external drive that clicks, with thirty years of scanned parish registers on it | Family-history projects around South Molton get digitised onto one portable drive and copied nowhere else | Unplug it at the first click and do not try it in another computer |
Where a South Molton parcel goes, and what comes back.
By South Molton.
See the whole list →Asked from South Molton, answered from Bristol.
Is there a counter in South Molton, or a collection on market day?
Neither — and by design. There is no counter in South Molton, no van and nobody meeting you on the Square on a Thursday; every case is worked at one lab in Bristol. Post the drive tracked and insured from a South Molton post office counter, or if you are heading up the M5 anyway, hand it in at the lab door, which is Bristol Data Recovery's: Castlemead, Lower Castle Street, Bristol, BS1 3AG — any weekday. The return leg home to EX36 is paid by us.
Which places around South Molton do you take work from?
The whole of EX36: the town, Pathfields Business Park, North Molton, and the farms up to the Exmoor edge and down the Mole. Parcels also come from the Link Road either way — the junctions at Hacche Lane and Borners Bridge on the Barnstaple side, and east towards Junction 27 — and from the Tarka Line side at King's Nympton. Since it all arrives by post, a postcode is the only geography that matters to us.
Years of Thursday market takings are in one spreadsheet on a laptop that will not start. Is a spreadsheet easier to get back than photographs?
The size of the file makes no difference; the state of the drive is what counts. A laptop that refuses to start has generally lost either its drive or its power supply, not the files on it, and once the drive is imaged read-only the spreadsheet comes back with its last-saved date beside it in the listing, which you check before paying. One drive is £300 + VAT; if the takings lived on a memory stick, £250 + VAT. Leave the laptop off and post it, or just the drive, whichever is easier to pack.
A decade of the saddlery's pattern scans is on one external drive that no longer shows up. Where do we start?
Unplug it and stop trying other cables and other computers; each attempt spins a failing disk again. If it clicks or buzzes the fault is mechanical and it needs a bench, not software. Post it tracked, tell us what the scans mean to the business, and the free diagnosis comes back with a list of what is readable. A single external drive is £300 + VAT, the figure is written down and fixed before work begins, and the drive goes home at our expense.
More like this in the casebook.
Pack it in South Molton; the first look in Bristol is free.
Turn it off, say what happened, and hold any decision until the free diagnosis is back.