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MHDR / Towns we cover / Sandhurst

On the bench from · Sandhurst GU47

Data recovery, Sandhurst. Berkshire at the Blackwater, with a GU47 post town of its own.

Sandhurst is a Berkshire town in Bracknell Forest, 20,383 people at the 2021 census, and it is four places rather than one: Central Sandhurst, Little Sandhurst, College Town and Owlsmoor, all sharing a GU47 post town of its own. The River Blackwater marks the county line along the south side. The Royal Military Academy's postal address is Camberley, Surrey, on an estate that crosses that boundary at the Wish Stream and is entered from this side by the College Town Gate on Yorktown Road. What the town itself runs on is small firms. Precision machining and toolmaking in the GU47 units, motor trades along Yorktown Road, electricians and groundworkers working out of a van, retail and logistics behind The Meadows at College Town: between them they hold CAD and CAM files, job histories, test results and before-and-after photographs, and nearly all of it sits on one workshop machine and one external drive. When those stop there is no van and no counter to take them to. The disk travels instead, by tracked and insured post, to the laboratory at Guildford, where the diagnosis costs nothing.

Tracked post · we pay the return Diagnosed at no charge on arrival A written price that holds

Describe the fault to an engineer
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What GU47 keeps sending to the bench.

None of these? Run the triage →
The symptomWhy it turns up hereStart here
A workshop PC with the job files for a one-off partThe drawing and the tool path are the business; the part is only metalTake the disk out and post that, not the machine
A diagnostic laptop off a Yorktown Road rampJob histories and readings, kept on a machine that lives in the dustWe recover, your IT rebuilds
A trade laptop holding the before-and-after photographsTest results and site pictures are what a warranty argument turns on laterStop using it, and tell us which job matters first
A recorder pulled off a yard gate at College TownFootage writes over itself, and the night you want is the oldest onePower it down at once and send the unit or its disk
A family external drive that went off a shelfTwenty years of photographs, and the only copy anybody madeLeave it off, box it, and say what you need most
If you post it in: post it to our intake lab tracked and fully insured, and slip the shipping form in beside the drive; we pay the return leg. How to pack it is covered in detail on the postage page.

What happens once the box leaves GU47.

Drawings and job files stay commercialA tool path, an inspection record, a customer list: that is somebody's trade, and it is treated as such. Devices are logged against a case reference, never against the company name, engineers open no more than reading the data back requires, and nothing goes outside the laboratory. What comes in from this town is ordinary commercial and domestic work — a firm's own files, a household's own pictures — and it is handled in confidence from the moment it is booked.
One railway line runs from here to the laboratorySandhurst station opened in 1909 as Sandhurst Halt and sits on the North Downs Line, the Reading-to-Guildford route Great Western works right through, diesel in the middle because that stretch was never wired. Blackwater, Farnborough North, North Camp and Ash are stops along it, neighbours rather than places this site covers. Your drive does not travel by train: it goes tracked and insured by post, and it is never collected from a GU47 address or from Maidenhead.
What goes whole, and what comes apart firstAn external drive still in its enclosure can be posted exactly as it stands, and so can a NAS unit — send the box as you use it. A server or a RAID array cannot. Those are stripped, and bare disks travel, each with the bay it came out of written on it, the member that dropped out first included. Start no rebuild before it leaves. Pack rigid, pad the lot, and put the shipping form in with it.
The price, fixed in writing before anything beginsA GU47 job is quoted like any other. Nothing is charged for the diagnosis, and afterwards one figure goes in writing and stays put. Memory cards and USB sticks: £250 + VAT. A hard drive by itself: £300 + VAT. Anything out of a CCTV, DVR or NVR system: £400 + VAT. A second disk, a NAS, a RAID or a server: from £500 + VAT. Virtual machine images, and forensic instructions: £800 + VAT. No recovery, no fee applies to every job but three — forensic instructions, embedded recorder work, and repairs needing donor components fitted inside the drive — and those three take a 50% deposit. The phone is 0800 6890668, answered weekdays, 9am until 5:30pm.

What Sandhurst rings about.

Is the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst or in Camberley?

Both, in a way, and the postal answer is Camberley, Surrey. The estate crosses the county boundary at the Wish Stream, which is why the College Town Gate on Yorktown Road stands on the Berkshire side. Sandhurst the town is something else again: a separate civil parish in Bracknell Forest with a GU47 post town of its own. That town is what this page is about. Camberley, Blackwater, Farnborough and Fleet sit over the county lines and are not claimed here.

The unit machine holds tool paths for parts we still remake. Can those come back?

Usually, yes, and that is the commonest job out of the GU47 units. Drawings, CAM output and inspection records read back like any other files once the disk itself is dealt with. Tell us on the first call which product numbers or job folders matter most and roughly when they were last touched; those are read back first and listed for you to check. One drive on its own is quoted at £300 + VAT, and looking at it beforehand is free.

It has lived in a hot, dusty workshop for years. Does that count against it?

Say so when you book it in, because heat and grit shorten a drive's life and change what the bench looks for. What does real harm is the home remedy: powering it on again and again to see whether it catches, opening the lid, putting it in a freezer, pointing recovery software at a disk that is still failing. Leave it switched off, box it as it is, and let the cleaning happen under bench conditions.

Does it go to Maidenhead, or somewhere else?

Somewhere else. Everything is worked at the intake laboratory, Guildford Data Recovery on Guildford Business Park, GU2 8XH — Building 2, ground floor. That is the name for the label, not this site's, or the courier may be turned away. Send it by tracked, insured post, or carry it in yourself on weekdays, 9am until 5:30pm. There is no counter, unit or van in Sandhurst and none in Maidenhead, and the carriage back to you is paid.

Also read, if you are in Sandhurst.

Getting images back → Drops and knocks → NAS recovery → The full coverage list →

Next door to Sandhurst, on the same terms

Wokingham → Crowthorne →

One padded box out of GU47, and the work starts on arrival.

Nothing is decided until the free diagnosis is in: leave the device off, and tell us what happened to it.

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