SG13 and SG14, Fore Street to Old Cross · Hertford
Data recovery in Hertford. Two stations, two London termini, one dead disk.
Hertford is the county town of Hertfordshire, and the county is named after the town rather than the other way about: Hertfordshire County Council is based here, and East Herts District Council works out of Wallfields. The 2021 census counted 29,418 people in the civil parish. Four rivers meet in the middle of it — the Lea, the Beane, the Rib and the Mimram — with the A414 crossing east to west and the A10 running down the eastern side. There are two stations on two separate lines: Hertford East for Liverpool Street, Hertford North for Moorgate and Stevenage. McMullen has brewed at Old Cross since 1827. What actually rings us is quieter than any of that — a solicitors' practice whose server will not mount, a surveyor's laptop that has begun to click, an accounts box nobody has opened since the day it was set up. It goes to our Oxford lab by tracked, insured post; the diagnosis that follows is free.
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Five jobs the county town sends us.
No page for your town? Try the fault-finder →| The problem | Why we see it locally | First move |
|---|---|---|
| A solicitors' practice server that has stopped handing out files | Fore Street offices keep case bundles and scanned deeds on one small box | Shut it down, pull the disks, mark each with its bay |
| A planning consultant's laptop that clicks when it wakes | Measured surveys and listed-building photography come home on it | Leave it powered off; do not try one more boot |
| A two-disk accounts NAS gone slow and loud | Client ledgers and years of filed returns went on once, never off | Clone it while it still reads |
| A council contractor's desktop that died over a weekend | Firms on council contracts keep project records, CAD and correspondence on one machine each | No reinstall over the top — the drive travels exactly as it is |
| A wedding card the camera now wants to format | A castle and four rivers keep photographers and videographers in work here | Eject it and post the card untouched — no repair tools |
The route a Hertford drive takes.
Next along from Hertford.
The whole coverage map →Four questions out of SG13 and SG14.
Is there a counter in Hertford where I can hand a drive in?
No, and that is on purpose. Hertford has no counter of ours, no van on the road and no collection anywhere. Work reaches us as a tracked, insured parcel, a case number goes on it the moment it lands, and we pay for the journey back. Anyone preferring not to post it can take the media to the Oxford intake lab instead, which accepts drop-offs on weekdays, 9am–5:30pm. The first look is free whichever route you take, and thirty days after your drive comes home the working copies here are deleted.
Which parts of Hertford and the county do you take work from?
All of SG13 and SG14 — the centre and Fore Street, Old Cross, the streets round the castle, and the lanes running off the A414 and the A10. Ware is the next town east and Stevenage sits at the far end of the Hertford Loop. A good share of our Hertfordshire work arrives from well outside the county town, and it makes no odds: one tracked parcel, the same fixed price, wherever the postcode says.
One disk in our accounts NAS has failed and nobody can open the ledgers.
Stop using the box today, and do not let it rebuild onto a replacement disk — a rebuild writes over the thing you are trying to keep. A NAS may travel whole or stripped to its disks, whichever is easier at your end; put the failed disk in with the rest. We image every member read-only and lift the ledgers and the filed returns off those copies, opening no more of them than the job needs. Kit with a second disk inside it starts at £500 + VAT, and that price is settled in writing before anything chargeable begins.
A card from Saturday's shoot now asks to be formatted. Are the pictures gone?
Usually not. That prompt normally means the file table has failed rather than the frames beneath it. Take the card out of the camera straight away and write nothing further to it — no repair option, no recovery app off the internet, no second attempt in a different body. A card or a memory stick is the £250 + VAT band; the diagnosis ahead of it is free.
Other jobs from the casebook.
Put it in the post from Hertford.
Power it down, tell us what went wrong, and let the free diagnosis land before you decide anything.