Our services

Audit

Audit tapes

Catalogue

List tape contents

Convert

Conversion from one tape format to another

Migrate

Migration of archived tape data to disc, NAS or Cloud

Recover

Recovery of data from problematic tapes

Restore

Restore tape(s) to hard drive

What our clients say

"I was eager to recover a valuable image from a 6250BPI magnetic tape from about 1986. A friend recommended that I contact Jim at Advanced Downloading in London. The process could not have been easier: I sent Jim an email on Thursday, I shipped him a tape from California on Friday, and I had my digital image on Monday morning. Terrific response time. Great service!"
Tom Porter @ Pixar
Senior Vice President (Production)
"Sony UKTEC IT department needed to recover some important system files from years ago. The system where they were located had long been de-commissioned. Fortunately the system backup tapes were still available. We found Jim and his data recovery company Advanced Downloading Ltd on the internet. Jim worked tirelessly late into the night and over the weekends to retrieve the data - which he did. This saved the company many months of re-writing code and allowed us to meet a critical deadline. Would highly recommend his service"
David Morgan @ Sony Europe B.V.
Head of IT Operations
"Advanced Downloading is a true tape data recovery and conversion specialist. We have used their service numerous times over the years. Their work is second to none and delivered on time. If you have corrupted/unreadable tapes or very old tapes that need to be converted to more modern formats or readable data ADL is the place to go. Highly recommended."
Eric Sminia @ Reqor Data Recovery
Manager
"We work in collaboration with ADL and they have proved to be the most reliable and knowledgeable experts in tape data recovery. They have a 100% success rate, which speaks for itself. If you are having problems reading tapes, look no further because you have found the UK experts".
Aran Pitter @ Data Recovery Specialists Ltd
Commercial Director
"Advanced Downloading provide excellent service when it comes to data extraction. They were able to help us out of a sticky situation in a timely and professional manner. They will be our go to for all things LTO in the future!"
TMM
Benjamin Smart @ Taylor Made Media Ltd
Edit
“I had to recover data off an old HP autoloader tape drive that had stopped working in 2011! Having removed the seven Ultrium 2 tapes from the tape drive I had no idea how to go from there. I spent half a day looking up potential companies that suggested they could do this; I particularly wanted one near Central London where I live. I saw Advanced Downloading on a search and decided to give them a call and spoke to Jim. He could not have been more helpful when I explained the situation. I arranged a drop-off date for the tapes the following week. Jim completed a quick look as to which tape was the most recent backup and had completed the data recovery that same day... He even was kind enough to put the most important data folder into a Dropbox folder for me that same day. Everything was super easy, very quick and at a good price. Thoroughly recommended.”
Peter Rowe @ PR Capital Ltd
Director
“We approached ADL with an important LTO-7 backup that was corrupt, having previously had no success with OnTrack.

Jim was upfront and extremely helpful with us from the beginning, offering useful and sound advice that helped inform our decision making. After deciding to go ahead with the recovery, he kept us in the loop throughout, carefully explaining exactly the issues he encountered, what this meant in terms of the recovery, and, of course, making sure not to get our hopes up. He needn’t have worried because he did a fantastic job and against all expectations recovered 97% of the media!

From first engaging with Jim to receiving the tapes back post-recovery, the communication and service was flawless. With so many data recovery scams out there it can be hard to find a company you can trust, but we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Jim to others or use Advanced Downloading (ADL) again."
NHFU
Hannah Gormley @ Natural History Film Unit

A FEW of the clients we've helped in 30+ years