Name withheld
“The main board on my notebook computer collapsed while I was working overseas. It was not able to be repaired. I was not unduly worried as I knew that I would be able to recover all the data off my hard disk and transfer it to a new computer.
Unfortunately it was not quite as easy as that. I was able to transfer most of my files but some key files could not be recovered. It turned out that some files were encrypted and there was nothing that I could do to get access to the data, which included all the files needed to file my BAS return. A few years earlier, while working on a special contract, my notebook computer had been set up as the master computer in a small network we established so that the others in the team could access our printer. My computer had had encryption placed on the files to ensure their security. The encryption was removed when the network was dismantled. What I did not realise was that the encryption remained on a number of the pre-existing files.
When I returned to Australia with my non-functioning computer, the repairer suggested that Payam might be able to recover my data for me. I took my hard disk to Payam to see what they could do for me. A couple of hours later they rang to say that they had recovered all my data, apart from a couple of inconsequential files. That was wonderful news as I was not relishing the prospect of attempting to reconstruct all my inadvertently encrypted files. Payam gave me a CD with all the data files from my hard disk and I was able to transfer them to my new computer without any problems.
The recovery process was very straightforward for Payam, as my hard disk contained the encryption algorithm, and they were able to access that algorithm. I might have been able to do something similar had I been able to find an identical computer to my non-working notebook computer, already an obsolete model, with an identical operating system, and install my hard disk on that computer. That was an uncertain and highly stressful undertaking, so I was extremely relieved that Payam had a straightforward process to access my encrypted data.