A dead server is rarely just hardware — it’s payroll on Friday, the practice management system, the job folder for Monday’s site. The bench treats server work as what it is: business continuity under pressure, with priority handling available, NDAs signed without fuss, and the same fixed-quote honesty as every other job.
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Server storage has its own physics: SAS disks on hardware controllers, arrays managed by a RAID card whose configuration is the map to your data, hot-swap bays that make disk shuffling easy and disk-order mistakes easier. The classic failure chain we’re handed: a drive fails quietly, the array runs degraded for weeks, a second drive falters, someone swaps disks trying combinations, and the controller — confused — offers to initialize. Wherever your server is on that chain, stop it there. Every disk gets imaged, the controller’s stripe logic gets reconstructed from evidence, and the volume comes back on the bench, not in the rack.
Most server recoveries begin with a backup that wasn’t: the job that silently stopped in March, the tape rotation nobody rotated, the ‘backup drive’ that was a mirror faithfully mirroring the corruption. No judgment — it’s the most human failure in IT — but it shapes the work: recovery targets the delta your last good backup misses, verified against it, so you restore a coherent whole rather than a guess. Tell us at intake what backups exist and their dates; it changes the plan and often shrinks the bill. Virtualised estates — the server that was really a host full of VMs — continue on the virtual machine page.
Say 'business down' on the first call and the job takes the priority track: intake today where geography allows, diagnostic turned around urgently, recovery queued ahead of standard work. Priority is a transparent line on the quote, not a surcharge discovered later.
For recovery, no. The array's logic is reconstructed from the disks themselves; an identical controller is occasionally convenient but never the plan. For rebuilding your production server afterwards, your IT support handles hardware — we hand back verified data.
Yes, and gladly — send yours or use ours. Confidentiality is standard here regardless (ICO-registered, staff-only handling, no outsourcing), but paper that says so is a normal part of business jobs and never an obstacle.
A free diagnostic first, always — then a fixed written quote before any work begins. No surprises on the invoice, because there's no invoice until you've approved the number.
A representative selection of related work from the bench.
Getting a device onto this bench only takes two moves, and the clock on your free look starts the moment it lands.
Strip out cables, caddies and power bricks — none of it helps — wrap the device so it can't shift in transit, and either post it insured to 83 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH2 2ER or bring it in yourself. Tuck a note of what happened in with it, and enclose the shipping form if you've printed one.
Arrival gets confirmed, the diagnostic runs at no cost to you, and the call that follows names the fault and states a fixed price. The bench stays idle on your device until you say go.
Free diagnostic, NDA as standard, and priority bench time when downtime is the real cost. See the business recovery page for how engagements like this run.