When a business partnership breaks down, the company's data becomes the battleground — deleted records, diverted funds and clients, a scrubbed shared drive. We reconstruct what happened on the partnership's own systems, for firms across Staines and Surrey. Free diagnostic, freephone advice.
Confidential and evidence-grade. A free diagnostic and a written scope come before any investigation begins.
When a business partnership breaks down in Staines, Surrey or beyond, these are the moments to preserve the company's systems before more is lost.
When partners or directors fall out, the company's data quickly becomes the battleground. One side deletes records, diverts enquiries or walks out with the client list; the other is left unsure what the business actually still holds. Because the equipment belongs to the partnership, this is work we can take on properly — examining company-owned systems and genuinely jointly-owned business assets to establish, on the evidence, what was deleted, moved or taken, and when.
Deleted invoices, ledgers, spreadsheets, contracts and emails are rarely gone the moment they leave the recycle bin. We image the company machine or server and carve those records back out of unallocated space, recover exports and backups from accounting packages such as Sage, Xero and QuickBooks, and rebuild a timeline of exactly when files were deleted or altered. Where the numbers themselves are in dispute, our findings hand cleanly to a forensic accountant to quantify the loss.
The most contested question in a partnership dispute is usually where the value went. Email and file activity often show enquiries being redirected, customer databases and pricing being exported, and company documents being copied to a USB stick or a personal cloud account in the run-up to the split. By tying that activity to dates, devices and accounts, we can evidence when a diversion began and what moved — the difference between an accusation and a provable one.
Everything is done to a standard that survives scrutiny from the other side: write-blocked, hash-verified images, a documented chain of custody, and a report split into findings and a technical appendix. Because both partners may distrust each other, we are happy to be instructed jointly or under a court direction, so neither side can later argue the evidence was cherry-picked. Where password-protected files or encrypted volumes are in the way, Passware Kit Forensic is used to open them where it is lawful to do so.
Partnership investigations sit within our forensic data recovery service — see the hub for the full evidence-grade process from imaging to report.
On the partnership's own systems, these are the strands we pull together into a single, defensible picture.
Invoices, ledgers and package exports carved back from disk.
Sent, received and deleted mail, from the mailbox and the drive.
Files and messages showing where enquiries and money went.
Who deleted or moved what across the company systems, and when.
Company data taken to a rival, a side company or a personal account.
The sequence of events across the weeks around the split.
We examine company-owned systems and genuinely jointly-owned business assets — the equipment the partnership itself owns — not a partner's private personal device, which we will not covertly access. Because feelings run high when partners are in dispute, we are glad to be instructed jointly by both sides or under a court direction, so the result cannot be dismissed as one partner's version of events.
For a partnership case we usually image the company machine or server in full, so call 0800 689 0668 first and we will agree what to submit and how to preserve it. Chain of custody is documented from the moment it reaches our secure Guildford location, and we can be instructed jointly by both sides.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive — we don't provide an internal drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) — only drives that can be removed and sent to us.
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Mark the package for the attention of Guildford Data Recovery and we'll call you as soon as we diagnose your media.
Not sure what to send? Call 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.
Secure the company data before more is lost — free diagnostic or freephone, evidence-grade at every step.