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Notes from the bench

The things we find ourselves explaining down the phone to Norfolk two or three times a week, written out properly once — by the people who do the work, without the jargon, the affiliate links or the manufactured panic.

// troubleshooting · 7 min read

A LaCie or portable hard drive that won't show up — what to check, and when to stop

LaCie enclosures fail in their own particular ways, and so do the rest. What a minute of looking and listening settles, which checks are safe, and where trying harder starts costing you data.

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// troubleshooting · 6 min read

A corrupted SD card has lost its index, not your photographs — and here is the way back

What the format prompt is really reporting, the five minutes of checking that cost you nothing, and how a sector-by-sector copy gets a day's shooting back — damp Broads mornings included.

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// business · 8 min read

Ransomware data recovery: the three places files survive, and why the ransom is never one of them

The moves that matter in the first hour, the three places files survive an encryption run, how to find out whether a free decryptor already exists — and the paying question settled for good.

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// guides · 7 min read

What hard drive data recovery costs in the UK in 2026 — the figures, not the funnel

The actual price bands, what moves a job from one to the next, the three questions that expose a funnel dressed as a lab, and how to keep your own bill down without gambling the data.

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// business · 7 min read

IT data recovery in Norfolk — where the continuity plan stops and the salvage bench starts

One phrase, two trades. What a continuity plan is for, what a recovery bench is for, which one a Norfolk firm needs at three o'clock on a bad afternoon, and the four habits that prevent most of it.

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// guides · 8 min read

Wiping a Mac in the right order: get the files out first, erase once

The sequence that works on Apple Silicon, on T2 machines and on the older Intel ones — plus a straight answer about what any laboratory could retrieve afterwards.

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