LL57 · the Menai Strait · Bangor
Data recovery, Bangor. A research set, a thesis, a clinic's list — each reaches us as one drive.
Bangor is one of the smallest cities in Britain, and among the busiest for its size. Bangor University, founded in 1884, had 9,935 students in 2024/25; Ysbyty Gwynedd runs 403 beds up at Penrhosgarnedd. Between them they hold the sort of data that exists only once — a research group's readings off the Menai Strait, a postgraduate's thesis on a single laptop, a clinic's records, a small firm's accounts on an ageing office disk. It is a bilingual city in a county where 64% speak Welsh, the highest share in Wales, and it is wired like the rest of upland Gwynedd, where all-operator mobile coverage is the poorest of any Welsh county and a cloud backup cannot be counted on. That is why a physical drive still matters here. Post it to the Bristol lab — east on the A55, then south — tracked and insured, and the first look costs you nothing.
Describe the symptoms to an engineer
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What fails in a university and hospital city.
Not listed here? Try the triage →| What shows up | Why it lands here | Do this now |
|---|---|---|
| A lab PC that will not wake up after a power cut | The instrument writes its readings to that machine, not to the network share | Lift the disk out and send it on its own |
| A department NAS that has quietly dropped a disk | Years of shared project files and field data live on the one unit | One number per disk, matching its bay, and only the bare drives travel |
| Every machine in a small office locked, the same note on each | The backup is usually on the same network the attacker walked through | Photograph the note, pull the network lead, and keep the power on |
| A dissertation on a single laptop, days from the deadline | Bangor University work with no copy saved anywhere else | Tell us the deadline when you book, not after |
| An external drive of fieldwork photos that has started to click | For a lot of small outfits, one portable disk holds the lot | Switch it off now; every restart takes a little more |
What is different about Bangor.
Questions from LL57 and the Strait.
We are in Bangor, out past Penrhosgarnedd toward Bethesda. Is LL57 covered?
Yes. Bangor, Penrhosgarnedd, Bethesda and the Ogwen valley are all LL57, and drives reach us from there most weeks. Being far from the lab changes nothing: post it tracked, we look it over free the day it arrives, and the trip back is paid.
A disk has dropped out of our department NAS. Do we post the whole box?
Power the box down and leave the rebuild well alone. Once a controller begins writing to a member that is already failing, a set that could have been read stops being readable. Record the bay each disk sat in before pulling it, send them as bare drives, and each is copied read-only before we reassemble the set.
My only copy of a dataset is on a laptop that will not boot. Is it gone?
Usually not. A laptop that will not start most often has a dying drive rather than an erased file, and the data holds until repeated attempts to power it on wear it down further. Leave it switched off and send the machine, or the disk alone; we copy the drive first and read your dataset off the copy.
Is there anywhere in Bangor I can drop a drive off?
No. Bangor keeps no counter, and neither does the Cardiff office. Tracked, insured post is the way, and from LL57 it reaches the Bristol lab as fast as from anywhere closer. Would you rather deliver it? The lab receives drives at the door on weekdays. If it is an awkward shape, give us a call first and we will agree how to box it.
Pages people often read next.
Send it from Bangor; we start the day it lands.
Do not switch it back on. Tell us what happened, and wait for the free diagnosis before agreeing to anything.