Disaster recovery (DR) is planning: the documented ability to get your business's IT running again after a fire, flood, cyber attack or major failure — standby systems, replicated servers, tested restore procedures, and a number for everyone to call. Data recovery is surgery: extracting files from a specific failed device — the dead server drive, the crashed NAS volume, the RAID array that lost two disks.
Sheffield businesses search for both under the same phrases, so let's be precise about what we are: we're the surgery. We don't sell DR consultancy or standby infrastructure — we're the lab your IT provider (or you) sends failed storage to when the thing that wasn't supposed to fail, failed. The two work together: a good DR plan means you rarely need us; when the plan has a gap, we're what fills it.
The pattern we see from South Yorkshire businesses: the disaster isn't a flood, it's a Tuesday. The office server's RAID 5 loses a second drive during a rebuild. The NAS that held the shared drive won't mount after a power cut. Ransomware encrypts the file server and the backups turn out to have been failing silently for months. In each case the DR question ('how do we keep trading this week?') and the data recovery question ('how do we get the files off this hardware?') run in parallel.
Our role is the second question, done fast: business-critical cases are prioritised on arrival, same-day courier collection from Sheffield can be arranged, and we work happily alongside your IT provider — they rebuild infrastructure on new hardware while we recover the data from the old. See RAID recovery, NAS recovery and SAN recovery for the specifics.
You don't need an enterprise DR programme to avoid most disasters. Follow 3-2-1: three copies of important data, on two different types of storage, one of them off-site or in the cloud. Test a restore quarterly — a backup you've never restored from is a hope, not a backup, and silent backup failure is the single most common thing we hear from businesses in trouble. Remember RAID is not a backup — it protects against one drive failing, not deletion, ransomware, fire or a failed rebuild. And write down where everything lives and who to call, because the person who knows is always on holiday when it happens.
Twenty minutes on that list is the cheapest disaster recovery service in Sheffield, and we say so as the people you'd otherwise be paying.
Power down the affected storage and stop anyone 'having a go' — rebuilds onto failing drives and repair utilities on corrupted volumes are how recoverable incidents become unrecoverable ones. Label drives by bay if you remove them. Then call 0800 689 0668, tell us it's business-critical, and we'll take it from there — courier collection, prioritised diagnostic within 48 hours of arrival, fixed quote, no fix no fee.
Not urgent? Start with the free online diagnostic and we'll call you back the same working day.
RAID is not a backup. It protects against a drive failing — not deletion, corruption, ransomware, theft, fire or a rebuild gone wrong. Half our business recovery work starts with this sentence.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee — start now or call the freephone.