The data recovery service

IT Services offers critical data recovery as part of its chargeable consultancy services

This service provides recovery of accidentally deleted data from the Nexus365 Email and SharePoint services, from the central Linux Service and from the Personal Web Space Service (users.ox.ac.uk).  All reasonable endeavours will be made to recover your files. There is, however, no guarantee that any particular file can be recovered, and IT Services is not liable for any loss incurred from a failure to recover a file.  Please note that IT Services backups are only available for 30 days.

While backups of certain systems are made to enable file store recovery after a disk failure or corruption, they are not intended or optimised for recovery of individual files. Although single file recovery is possible, this involves analysing the backup contents to locate the desired files and can be very time-consuming. In the past this service has only been offered if a strong academic case could be made for the recovery of the files.

If the lost files are web pages then you may be able to retrieve these yourself from the Google Search cache or the internet archive.

If you have lost e-mails from your Nexus account, please first try the self-recovery functions before requesting a file recovery.

The cost

£40 per request (+ VAT if you are not paying by departmental order) is the cost for recovering any number of files for one user from a single system. No charge will be made for recovery of files lost through the failure of an IT Services-run system or any error on the part of IT Services.

How to request a recovery

In order to recover a file, it is necessary to have information about when it was on the computer system, so that the appropriate backups can be identified. Backups are only held for a very limited period so once a file has been deleted it is important to request a recovery as soon as possible. In order to use this service:

  1. Purchase a "Data Recovery Service" at the IT Services Store (will need to be connected to the University network or use a VPN connection) paying by your preferred method:

     

  • by credit or debit card
  • by departmental order: the expense item code for the file recovery service is Z3140

Note: 

If you are not directly connected to the university network you will need to use a VPN connection in order to access the shop web pages. If you have any difficulties making the online shop purchase, please contact the Service Desk explaining the situation so they can contact the online shop team.

 

 

  1. You will receive a confirmation e-mail from the online shop with an order number
  2. Please create a data recovery service request quoting the order number and stating what service you need files restoring from. Include the Time and Date when lost, Folder(s) and username of the account. The Services are: Nexus SharePoint, GNU/Linux and the Web Server service. If anything is not clear to you, please discuss the form with the Service Desk. You will receive a second e-mail confirming that we have received your request
  3. Remember that a charge will be made, even if the files cannot be recovered
What happens next?

We shall contact you by email as soon as we can, but, depending on the other commitments on our staff, this may take up to a week. The email will contain instructions on how to access your recovered files. If you do not receive a response after 5 working days, please contact the Service Desk.

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