SY23 · Cardigan Bay · Aberystwyth
Data recovery for Aberystwyth. A university, the National Library, and farms up every valley.
Aberystwyth is the largest town in Ceredigion, and for its size it holds a remarkable amount of data. Aberystwyth University teaches around 8,970 students and runs plant-science and environmental research out at Penglais and Gogerddan; the National Library of Wales, up on Penglais Hill, keeps roughly six million books alongside maps, photographs and manuscripts, much of it now being digitised; the county council and a Welsh Government office add a large public payroll. In 2025 the town became the first UNESCO City of Literature in Wales. Around all of it lie the hill farms of the Rheidol and Ystwyth valleys, the seafront guest houses, and the photographers who work the coast. What fails is ordinary — a drive stops, an array drops a member, a card will not read — and out here the offsite backup you assumed was running may not have finished uploading. It is a long way to the bench, but that only changes the postage. Phone before anything is unplugged, label every disk, and send the set. The first look is free.
Describe the symptoms to an engineer
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What breaks in a research and farming county.
Not listed here? Try the triage →| What shows up | Why it lands here | Do this now |
|---|---|---|
| A research group's array drops a volume mid-study | Field and lab data from a long project, and no spare disk in the set | Send the disks out bare, numbered in bay order, the failed one too |
| A farm-office PC up the valley that will not boot | The accounts and the Sustainable Farming Scheme records sit on it alone | Leave it switched off; do not reinstall Windows over it |
| An office NAS that dropped a disk months ago and ran on | A degraded set reads no differently, right until a second disk goes | Power it off before the next one |
| A photographer's external drive that has begun to click | A season shot along the coast and up the hills, held on that one disk | Set it aside now — each restart can cost you more frames |
| A shared folder of client files, every one now refusing to open | A small practice in a county town is exactly what the gangs pick | Disconnect it from the network first, then work through the ransomware page |
Before the parcel leaves Aberystwyth.
Questions from Aberystwyth and Ceredigion.
Do you cover Aberystwyth and the rest of Ceredigion?
Yes — Aberystwyth itself and out across Ceredigion, from Borth and Aberaeron to Tregaron and the valleys behind the town. Being at the far end of mid-Wales changes nothing: post the drive tracked and insured, the first look is done the day it reaches the bench, and we cover the carriage home.
The office backup runs to the cloud on its own — isn't that our safety net?
Only once it has genuinely finished. Plenty of offices out here depend on a slow rural line or a satellite link, and an overnight upload that never quite completes leaves you a copy that stopped days ago. If the working drive has failed, send it — and check what the offsite copy actually holds before you lean on it.
Two disks have dropped out of our NAS. What do we send?
Turn it off and hold off any rebuild — once a controller starts writing to a weak disk, a set that could still be read stops being readable. Ease the drives out bare, mark the bay each held, keep the one that failed first alongside, and send the disks rather than the whole box. We rebuild the array here in software, from an image of each disk.
Is there anywhere in Aberystwyth to drop a drive off?
No — there is nowhere to drop a drive in Aberystwyth, and nothing is taken at the Cardiff office. It is all handled at the Bristol intake lab, so send it there tracked and insured, or leave it at that lab yourself on a weekday if the drive suits you. Call before packing and we will work it out together; the leg home is paid our end.
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Send it from Aberystwyth; work starts the day it lands.
Do not switch it back on. Tell us what happened, and wait for the free diagnosis before agreeing to anything.