Glass Quarter, DY7–DY9 · Stourbridge
Stourbridge data recovery. A glass studio's commission photos cannot be re-shot.
Stourbridge stands on the River Stour at the south-western edge of the Black Country, about eleven miles west of Birmingham, and has sat in the West Midlands under Dudley Metropolitan Borough — rather than Worcestershire — since 1974. The town of roughly 56,950 people covers the DY8 centre and the DY7 and DY9 streets around it. Just north, at Wordsley and Amblecote, the Glass Quarter still works: Tudor Crystal and Plowden and Thompson make specialist glass, while the Red House Glass Cone and Ruskin Glass Centre keep the heritage open. A studio's cutting patterns, engraving files and commission photography tend to sit on one machine or a memory card; a small engineering firm keeps its drawings and job records on a single server; a back office in the Merry Hill orbit runs its tills, rotas and CCTV off one box. When that machine stops, there is rarely a second copy. Post it to the lab, where the first look is free.
Tell an engineer what it is doing
0800 6890668
What breaks around Stourbridge.
No match here? Run the triage →| What you see | Why we see it here | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A glass studio's photo drive that has stopped spinning | Cutting patterns, engraving files and the commission shots all sit on that one machine | Leave it switched off and post it exactly as it is |
| A small engineering firm's server that will not boot | CAD drawings and job records for orders still open live on that box | Do not reinstall or rebuild it; simply power it down |
| A shop back-office PC in the Merry Hill orbit gone dead | The till takings, staff rotas and CCTV export are all held on the one PC | Unplug it and write down what you last saw working |
| A four-bay NAS in the office that has gone quiet | Sold as a backup, it is really one box of disks with no copy anywhere else | Power it down; send it whole, or as bare disks labelled by bay |
| A home external drive that clicks and then stops | Years of family photographs and video sit on it, and nowhere else | Unplug it at the first odd noise; do not keep retrying it |
Four things worth knowing in Stourbridge.
Questions we hear from DY8.
Do you cover Wordsley, Amblecote and the rest of DY8?
Yes, with Wordsley, Amblecote and the DY9 side of town included. Nothing is picked up by road, so distance to a doorstep decides nothing: a tracked parcel out of DY7 reaches the bench on the same footing as one sent from the middle of Stourbridge.
Is there anywhere in Stourbridge to hand a drive in?
No, the town has no counter. Everything is handled at the Manchester lab on Oxford Street (Peter House), which is open midweek for anyone who would rather deliver by hand. The large majority just post it — insured, tracked — and the trip home is covered.
A memory card of commission shots reads as empty. Recoverable?
Usually, yes. An empty card rarely means the files have gone; they generally survive until something new records over them. Stop using the card, keep any camera or phone from reformatting or repairing it, and post it in on its own. A single card sits in the £250 + VAT band.
One disk in the office array has failed, but it still runs. Urgent?
Handle it as urgent. A crippled array keeps giving out files, so it is usually left in place until a second disk fails and everything halts. Leave any rebuild well alone. Turn it off and send it — the complete unit, or the bare disks with each one's bay marked, as you prefer. Anything with a second disk starts at £500 + VAT.
Other pages worth a look here.
From Stourbridge, it is one tracked parcel to the bench.
Keep it powered down and tell us how it happened. Nothing is agreed until the free diagnosis lands.