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MKDR / Where we work / Tring

HP23, Aldbury and Wilstone · Tring

Data recovery, Tring. The station was built out of town, nearer Aldbury.

Tring is a Chiltern market town in a gap through the hills, 12,427 people at the 2021 census, counted over the civil parish — small, and in Hertfordshire whatever the HP postcode suggests. The Grand Union reaches its summit level here, and the four reservoirs dug to feed it — Wilstone, Tringford, Startops End and Marsworth — have been a national nature reserve since 1955. The Natural History Museum at Tring, on Akeman Street, has belonged to the Natural History Museum since 1937 and costs nothing to walk into. The working town behind all that is small and scattered: farm offices holding herd records and spray diaries on a single PC, wildlife recorders with seasons of survey photography on one external drive, the antiques and decorative-arts trade keeping provenance notes and sale records on a laptop, boatyards and engineers along the canal. One machine each, and seldom a second copy. When one stops, it goes to the Oxford intake laboratory under tracking and insurance, and the diagnosis on arrival costs nothing.

Tracked to us · free post back Free diagnosis once it arrives A fixed price in writing

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Tring's usual five.

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The problemWhy we see it locallyFirst move
A farm office PC that will not start in spraying seasonHerd records, field maps and the spray diary sit on that one machinePower it down at the wall and do not restart it
An antiques dealer's desktop, dead in the week of a saleCondition photographs, provenance notes and years of sale recordsRecovery from us, rebuild by IT
A camera card reading as empty after a morning at the reservoirsBird counts and survey photography, recorded once and nowhere elseStop using the card; post it exactly as you found it
A contractor's cab tablet that will no longer wake upGPS lines and yield figures live on the tablet, not on the tractorDo not try a factory reset — send it untouched
A boatyard NAS by the canal summit with one disk downDisks bought as a pair rarely fail far apartLeave the array alone: no fresh disk, no resync
Sending it by post: the parcel is addressed to Oxford Data Recovery at the Oxford Science Park — our intake lab, and the name a courier looks for, so put that on the label rather than ours. Tracked and insured, shipping form inside, return journey on us. The full address and the packing steps sit on the enquiry page.

A Tring drive, from postbox to file list.

Where the parcel actually ends upThe intake laboratory is John Eccles House, Oxford Science Park, out at Littlemore. As a road route that is either the A41 heading west through the Chilterns, or a southward run to the M25 and then out along the M40 — though none of it needs driving. Tracked, insured post out of HP23 does the same job, and the leg home is paid for by us.
Work that has stopped goes firstTell us at the outset that trading has halted — the farm office mid-season, the dealer with a sale in the diary — and the job is booked as a priority. It is opened on the day the parcel reaches Oxford, imaged right through the working day, and given a date we then stand behind.
When there is more than one diskExternal drives are welcome exactly as they are, case included. A NAS can be posted whole or stripped back to its disks, and both suit the bench equally. The exception is a server or a RAID box — send the disks on their own, and put the bay number on every one, because the rebuild turns on that order and re-deriving it here costs hours. Anything with a second disk inside is quoted from £500 + VAT.
The price, fixed and in writingThe diagnosis costs nothing. A single fixed price in writing comes after it — £300 + VAT for one drive, £250 + VAT for a card or memory stick — and a VAT invoice at the end of it. Nothing chargeable begins before you have agreed that figure, and on most jobs a failed recovery costs you nothing.

Next along from Tring.

The whole coverage map →
Leighton Buzzard → Dunstable → Berkhamsted → Aylesbury →

What Tring wants to know first.

Which places round Tring do you take work from?

Tring itself and the HP23 villages beyond it — Aldbury, Wilstone, Marsworth, and the farms out along the reservoirs — with Berkhamsted, Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard either side. Tring is in Hertfordshire, whatever the HP postcode suggests: Dacorum Borough Council at district level, Hertfordshire County Council above it. None of it turns on anyone travelling, so a lane address at the edge of the parish is handled exactly like one on the High Street.

Years of survey photographs sit on a single external drive that no longer shows up. Are they recoverable?

Usually they can. A drive that no longer appears is more often a failed board, a seized head assembly or a corrupted file table than pictures that have genuinely gone. The damage is done by plugging it in again and again to see whether it behaves this time. Leave it alone, tell us which seasons and folders matter, and the free diagnosis reports on the state of the images before anything is chargeable.

The backup disk has spent the winter in an unheated outbuilding. Is it still worth sending?

Yes — and please say so when you book it in. Cold stores, yards and farm outbuildings leave condensation on the electronics, and corrosion works away quietly underneath. Do not stand it on a radiator, do not play a hairdryer over it and do not power it up to find out: controlled cleaning on the bench deals with that far better than anything possible at home.

Is there a counter in Tring where I can hand a drive over?

None at all — no counter, no van, no collection anywhere. Media comes in by post, insured and tracked on the journey to us and paid for by us on the journey back; a case number is attached as soon as it is logged. Anyone who would rather not trust it to the post can use the Oxford intake laboratory, which receives drop-offs on any weekday between 9am and 5:30pm.

Other jobs from the casebook.

Recovering photos → Flood, water & damp damage → External drives → Everywhere we cover →

In Tring, the next step is a padded box.

Power it down, tell us what went wrong, and let the free diagnosis land before you decide anything.

0800 6890668

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