Malfunctioning DVDs was not something I had come across before and so didn't even know they could fail until I had placed complete faith in them. I had confidently backed up my computer and all of its contents on to two separate DVDs and I began to strip my computer.

The discs it turned out, had not burnt properly, but as no error message had been received, I was not aware until I tried to reload the information on to my computer and discovered that the discs were faulty.

Payam worked on the discs until the contents were retrieved and basically saved my business. As a sole trader with a new business of 6-months it was vital that I had the records restored.

Payam understood my needs and took the time to identify the problems professionally and in a timely manner.

Francesca Valmorbida
Pablo Fanque

In 2005 my wife and I spent seven months driving through China and India our Land-Rover camper van.  As we took digital photos we downloaded them onto our laptop computer.  But then we started to run out of space on the hard drive, so I burnt the photos of the first part of the trip to DVD and deleted them from the computer.

Later, the DVD appeared to be empty.  Even our computer-geek son-in-law could find nothing.  Although I thought the blank DVD was now a hopeless cause, I mentioned it to Ben at Storm Video in Gladesville who was doing work on our videos.  He recommended Payam Data Recovery in North Sydney.

With only the faintest hope of a result, we took the DVD to Payam at Payam and, like magic, he recovered 890 perfect photos of our unrepeatable trip.  We were only too happy to pay $120 for this service.  Double that would still have been cheap considering what we thought we had lost.  This is a service worth knowing about.

Peter Kincaid

I arrived home and excitedly put the cd of my saved photos from a brilliant trip to Kakadu and Arnhem Land into my computer…nothing there, they had been zapped by airport baggage check security scanners and not one photo had survived. 

After weeks of trying different solutions and talking to IT experts it looked like specialist data recovery was my only hope.  I contacted Payam because of the client base listed on their website and they were wonderful. 

It took a couple of attempts using different software but they were finally able to recover all my photos and five small videos.   I was over the moon.

Throughout the process they gave me regular feedback on progress, were patient and courteous in our face to face communications and were happy to keep trying different methods until I was sure every photo was recovered.  I could not recommend Payam more highly.

Brett O’Halloran

Two years ago my daughter embarked on a GAP year as a volunteer school teacher in West Malaysia, recording her adventures with her going away present, a digital camera, and storing the photos an a cheap, probably defective Malaysian compact disc.

Upon her return to Australia no one could open the disc and various "experts" assured me the pictures were lost. After about 18 months I called Payam at Payam Data Recovery who said simply "Send me the disc. If I can recover the photo’s I’ll charge you 120 bucks. If not – nothing".

A few days later Payam sent me a disc. My kid’s surprise Christmas present this year was several hundred "lost" photographs of her adventure.

It was one of the best presents I have ever been able to give her.

Thanks Payam.
Clyde Secomb

I have been backing up files to CDs since 1998. The burnt files include complex quarry plans created with geological software. I regularly recall these plans for updating. However, I discovered recently that 3 of my back up CDs would not open, even though they had opened up before.

Our IT Dept recommended PAYAM Data Recovery as a company who could possibly open the CDs for me and recover the data. I took the CDs in to PAYAM along with one that would open, as an example of the sort of data I needed to recover.
PAYAM were successful in recovering the data from 2 of the 3 disks, burning the data for me onto new CDs. All the data was intact and could be opened in the geological software for further use. Whilst it would have been good to recover the data from the third disk, the main data I urgently needed was on the CDs recovered, so the exercise was worthwhile and worth the cost of recovery.

It was thought that the reason I couldn't open the 3 CDS was that when the data was originally burnt, the process was not correctly finalised. In future we will close off a back up session and start a new CD for new data. CDs are so cheap it is worth the small expense and slightly extra storage to save parcels of data to separate CDs.
PAYAM were most professional in their handling of the job and I will definitely use them again if I have another data recovery problem.”

G. Pollington

All of my precious traveling photographs had been burned onto a CD by me and then promptly written over by someone else. This was my only copy and I was devastated at the thought of losing all these pictures.

I took the disc to Payam and was told there was a one in ten chance the pictures could be recovered. I was upset but a little hopeful but the next day Craig called to say every bit of data had been retrieved. I think I told him he had just made me day! In fact, my whole week!”

Jeanette (Surname withheld)

When I returned from an overseas trip I tried to access my photos burnt onto CD.  Nothing!  I took it to a photo developer and they told me there was nothing on the CD.

I knew there was, so took it to a computer technology expert - they also told me they couldn’t find anything, but advised me to look on the internet and find a data recovery firm. 
That is how I found Payam, conveniently located in North Ryde. I rang and explained the problem and was told they would do their best and if they could not recover the photos I would not be charged.  I thought this was very fair, but did not hold out much hope of getting the photos.  However, I was delighted when they rang and said they had been able to recover my data. 

All 500 photos were restored and I am very grateful for their service, courtesy and professionalism. 

Helen Keys

Recently we accidentally pressed format on our DVD camera disc and completely wiped out a very important part of our holiday overseas. We immediately got the DVD over to you and in record time you had rung us back to say you managed to find over half an hour of lost footage.

Thank you very much for your promptness and professionalism in the matter. We now can still watch our holiday moment thanks to you guys and are very relieved.

Once again thank you and we have no hesitation in recommending you to others who might come across the same.

Rose Miletic