'No questions asked' deal sees Napier musician reunited with stolen hard-drives

Napier musician Kieran Taylor has had his irreplaceable computer hard-drives returned after they were stolen on Thursday. Photo / Paul Taylor

A "no questions asked" deal has seen a Napier musician reunited with decades worth of irreplaceable music recordings.

But while it was the result Kieran Taylor was after, he said how far he had to go for what was rightfully his was wrong.

On Thursday, sometime between 11am and when he came home at 3pm, his computer, three hard-drives and his flatmate's personal belongings had been stolen.

Since news of the theft went public on Monday, he had been contacted by the people with his belongings and within a "matter of hours" his hard-drives had been returned.

However, it was on the proviso that they remained anonymous.

"I think it is the best possible outcome I could have got but at the same time, I am still a bit saddened at the fact that I couldn't get anything else and both my flatmates are still missing stuff that is important to them."

Taylor said he felt "nervous and uncomfortable" doing it, but it was something he "had to do".

"I wouldn't have had to have done it if I had backed stuff up to the cloud. As far as the other hardware stuff that is replaceable so I didn't really care about that."

He was grateful to everyone who kept an eye out for the stolen goods.

The 37-year-old, who has cerebral palsy, formed an industrial thrash metal band called Substrain earlier this year, after years of hard work.

"I've been plugging away at this for 10 years and it picked up a bit of steam and I finally got a singer and a guitarist. I couldn't even quantify how many hours of work is on the drives.

"Instead of me spending months putting together something that won't even sound the same, I will have it running within a couple of months".

Now, he has bought a terabyte of iCloud storage and plans to have multiple duplicates as well, with some hidden in secret spaces.

But until they are backed up, he was so "paranoid" that he brought the hard-drives to work.

Substrain are set to open for Ivy Blue at Napier's Paisley Stage on January 20 - their biggest gig to date.