Frequently asked questions
Answers to common questions about RAID, NAS and server data recovery. For the full service details, see our RAID Recovery page.
Yes, we can. They usually use a Linux-based file system, and we’ve got specialized software to be able to recover the data from them. If there’s a problem with the hard drive, we can test it for you and fix the problem, make a clone copy, then rebuild the RAID using professional data recovery software, and then give you all the files back on a new external USB hard drive.
Yes, we work on Synology, NAS, and RAID units every day. The most common causes is one or two failed drives. Once we have a look at it, we’ll give you a free estimate and quote. We’ll generally work on a clone copy of your drives and fix any hardware problems, make a clone copy and rebuild the RAID. We’re generally very successful.
Yes. We don’t need the enclosure or the RAID controller. We’ve got professional data recovery software that we can use to rebuild the RAID without the hardware.
Yes, we can. If you bring the hard drives to us, we’ll test them for you to work out if there’s any problem with it. It’s possible if it’s not booting, it could have a damaged file system or one failing drive. But we can use our professional data recovery software to rebuild the RAID in a read-only way without modifying anything and save all the files to a USB external hard drive for you.
Yes. We can recover the data for you from a failed drive with one or more multiple drives. In most cases, we are successful. Most important thing is don’t replace any drives or don’t rebuild or change the RAID configuration. Our goal will be to make a clone copy of the working drives, then temporarily repair the faulty drives or the damaged drives to make a clone copy of them, and then rebuild the RAID using the clone copies of all the drives using professional data recovery software.
Yes. Generally the manufacturer’s support try to help you but sometimes they do make the problem worse. Whatever you do, don’t let them create a new volume or reformat the unit or delete the shares, because usually that means that if we do recover the data, we may not be able to get the original file name or folder names back. So it’s always advisable to try not to let anyone tamper with it if the data is important. But in most cases, we are successful, even if the manufacturer’s support is not able to help you, because they don’t have the experience to help with hardware failures and file system corruption.
Yes. We can make a clone copy of the drives and then rebuild it with data recovery software in a read-only way to be able to see all your files and folders, and then copy it onto a new external hard drive for you.
Yes, as long as we can get the most recently failed drive temporarily working by repairing it, whatever the problem is, make a clone copy and then use that to rebuild the RAID. With the RAID 5, we can leave one drive out. The only time we can’t help is if two drives have failed and they both can’t be fixed, which is pretty rare.
Yes. In most cases, we can rebuild the file system and extract the files and folders, using specialized data recovery tools and custom-made proprietary software that we’ve developed ourselves.
Yes we can. We’ve got several of their enclosures and hardware units to use in case we need to, but in recent years, there is professional data recovery software that we have that can actually recover the data without the external unit. If the unit itself won’t power up, we can recover the data directly from the failed drives or the working drives.
Yes, in most cases those Lacie 2Big drives, in most cases one of the drives have started to fail, causing that error.
Yes it can. Most NAS units after they fail, sometimes they go through an automatic repair or rebuilding. Surprisingly that this can actually take a very long time, um, depending on the size of the volume it can take many days or even up to a week. Um, if your NAS unit seems to be not responding after a power surge, then it could be doing an automatic repair or rebuild, or it might have a failed volume. The good news is that we can remove the disks from the NAS, uh, access them independently of the unit, recover the data using professional data recovery software, because most NAS units are using a Linux EXT3 or EXT4 file system, or sometimes a ButterFS, which is spelled B T R F S, or XFS file system. A variety of different Linux-based file systems. We can handle those and we can access the files directly, especially the shared folders, and copy the files to a portable USB hard drive. That way you can either, you can get the NAS unit repaired, replace any damaged components, factory reset the unit, and then copy the files back from the USB hard drive we give you.
We recommend that you check your backups first or get help from an IT support person to do that type of analysis. If you discover that something is missing, we can do a, a scan for lost or deleted files, or if there’s some sort of hardware failure, we can help fix it and rebuild the RAID. But if you’re looking for analysis of backups and what’s missing and what’s not backed up, you’re probably best to talk to your IT support professional or a managed IT service company, or the technical support of the NAS if they provide that for you to check that yourself.
Yes, in most cases it is possible. The first thing to do is stop trying to do any repair or rebuild with a failed drive or a missing drive. Um, if you bring the hard drives, all the hard drives to us, all of them, we’ll test them for you, we’ll work out what’s wrong with the failed drive. If it’s a RAID 5 or RAID 6, it may be possible to leave that drive out and recover the data without repairing the drive or doing any work on it to make the data recovery cost cheaper and the data recovery process faster. Then once we have a clone copy of the good drives, we’ll try and fix the failed drive temporarily to make a copy of it. And using professional data recovery software, using read-only techniques, we’ll usually be able to recover all the files and folders and copy them to a portable USB hard drive or SSD for you.
Yes, but in order for us to recover your data, we’ll have to temporarily fix the problem with the failed drive, make a clone copy of it to a new drive, and then we’ll use our professional data recovery software to rebuild the RAID and backup all the files for you onto a new USB hard drive. We do this regularly and there’s a good chance of success.
Yes, we can. We have professional data recovery software and tools that can read those and recover the files, and we can save all the file name and folder names with the original folder structure and original file names for you.
Yes we can. So we’ll, we can remove the hard drives for you from the enclosure, and we can test them and recover the data or rebuild the RAID without the original enclosure using professional data recovery software and tools, and we’ll copy all the files onto a new USB hard drive or SSD for you.
Yes, as long as you don’t, uh, format the volume doing a full format or low-level format, your data should still be there, and using the, uh, correct professional data recovery tools and technology, there’s a good chance we can get everything back for you.
Yes, um, everything we do is read-only, which means that it will examine your drives for you without making any changes. If they’ve failed or there’s any kind of problems with them, we always make a sector-by-sector clone copy and work off a copy, so we don’t change or modify your original drives unless there’s a hardware failure. If there’s a hardware failure in the drives, we do have to temporarily repair the fault. This may involve a head replacement, firmware repair, or replacement of the printed circuit board or PCB if it’s damaged, and then we make a clone copy of it. So we’re not actually trying to modify your original drives to rebuild the RAID with any software. We work with a clone copy in a read-only way to rebuild the RAID using professional data recovery methods, but nothing will repair it like a RAID unit would, where it tries to kind of repair the volume or repair the file system. No changes at all are made to your original drives.
It depends on what’s on your RAID and whether it’s backed up. If you have no backup ever and the RAID holds irreplaceable, life or death, sentimental or business files, like business databases, virtual machines or family photos, don’t do anything. Check where your other backups are, when the last one was and what’s missing. If it’s too risky, don’t take a chance: bring it to a data recovery company like Payam Data Recovery. We remove the drive, make clone copies, never make any changes or modify the original drives, and back up the data in a read-only way using professional data recovery software.
If it’s only music or movies or TV shows and you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on data recovery, you can replace the drive, try and hit repair, and see what happens. The risk is that when one failed drive makes the RAID degraded, we often find a second drive is failing too and it just hasn’t been reported or found. The rebuild then fails after a few days, which can cause data loss, such as lost folder names or file names, or files coming back corrupted if you bring it to us afterwards. So it’s pretty risky.
Yes, we can recover the virtual machines from a failed RAID behind a VMware ESXi host. We can recover the files as they are, so you can use them again, or if you prefer, we can extract the contents of the files onto an external hard drive, for example if you’re after a database or something else special.
Yes. Whether the server has a broken backplane or a SAS drive won’t spin up, we can read and work with SAS drives, as well as other types of server drives. We have specialised hardware and tools to make a clone copy or repair failed SAS drives.
As part of our RAID data recovery service, we offer a free assessment and quote. Bring the drives to us and we’ll test them, work out how they work together, tell you what the problem is and give you a free assessment and quote to get the files back. If you approve the quote, we back up all the files and folders onto a new external hard drive.
No, that’s not a service that we offer. We recommend that you can take it back to the manufacturer or contact the manufacturer’s support and see if they have any preferred repairers for the NAS unit. But in our experience, if the NAS unit’s failed, it may be better off just to buy a new one. We find that most new NAS units, they’re much better, have better security, better mobile phone apps, and better connectivity for other apps like firewalls and security. So it may be a good time to actually buy a new NAS, but if it’s very expensive, then it might be something simple like a new power supply that you could contact the manufacturer about, but that’s not a service that we offer. We only recover the data and copy it to a new hard drive so you can access it on any computer you have.
Not by us. There are some companies that offer that as a service, but we do not offer that as a service.
In a RAID 10, each drive has its own mirror, so in theory pulling out one disk shouldn’t lose your data because a copy is already there. I’d recommend getting help from the manufacturer or supplier of the RAID first. If you’ve tried that and you’re stuck, bring the hard drives to us and we can help. In most cases this is a straightforward recovery for us. We’ll test each drive, work out which drives are mirrored pairs and check which are healthy or failed. Then we’ll offer you the cheapest option, which is recovering the data from half the drives. That saves you time and money, as there’s no need to pay for us to recover the same data from both drives in each mirrored pair.
We may not be able to tell how it was deleted, but in most cases we can recover the deleted data. Most NAS units have a network recycle bin or trash folder, so check there first. If it’s not there, we usually do a raw recovery, which is a long, deep scan using several different data recovery programs. This recovers lost or deleted files from the free space, but the file names and folder structure are lost. We then use any metadata we find to sort the recovered files by year and by file type, such as PDF documents, JPEG photos, MOV videos, Word documents and spreadsheets. This only works if the data hasn’t been overwritten yet.
In some cases, yes. It depends on the file system. If the drive was formatted with a Windows file system such as NTFS, exFAT or FAT32, in most cases we can get the file names and folder names back. Sometimes the top-level folder structure is lost, but you may still get the subfolders and file names back. If it was an Apple or Linux file system, the file names and folder names are usually lost after formatting, so we do a raw recovery. That means we usually save the files by type, then by year and category, such as Word documents and PDFs. We don’t know until we try, but generally if it was Windows formatted the names come back, and if it was Apple or Linux formatted they normally don’t.
In most cases, yes. The best thing to do is stop using it. Don’t write any data to it and don’t format it again. There’s then a good possibility the data can still be recovered.
Definitely press cancel and don’t format it. If you format it, even if we can recover the data, you may lose all the file names and folder names. The best thing to do is test the drive with professional data recovery software. If the software can see all your files and folders, save the files and make a backup. If you can’t see the files and folders, for example because it’s a Linux file system, bring it to Payam Data Recovery. We’ll have a look at it for free and give you a free assessment and quote. We’ll let you know if there’s file system corruption or damage to the partition, or a hardware failure such as the drive freezing your computer, read errors or a SMART status warning, and we’ll recover your data for you.
We don’t offer a migration service, but we can back up your data if you can’t do it yourself. If you can’t connect to the NAS, or there’s a problem with it, such as it not turning on, you can’t access the files or the network share isn’t visible, we can back up the data for you onto a portable USB hard drive. You can then plug the USB hard drive into your new NAS and transfer the files across, usually by dragging and dropping them in its file manager.
No. If you have Rescue or any other insurance-type program, it isn’t covered through us unless that company agrees to pay us. Rescue is generally run by a separate company with its own business model, usually through an insurance company that pays it a fixed fee. It has nothing to do with our business, and we’re not related to it.
Most RAID and NAS recovery jobs cost from $2,500 to $6,500 on Economy. A basic backup from healthy drives starts at $350, and Priority and Emergency are faster and cost more. The price depends on the number of drives, how many have failed and the size of the RAID. The assessment and quote are free.
Economy takes 3 to 4 weeks, Priority takes 1 to 3 weeks and Emergency takes 2 to 6 days on average, with no guarantee. The final timeframe is given in your written quote after testing.
We recover data from Synology, QNAP, Drobo and Dell RAID arrays. We only need the drives from the array, not the NAS enclosure.
Supply your own NDA and our director, Payam Toloo, will sign it.
A 24/7 emergency service is available as a premium, extra cost service. Call 0404 872 926. Emergency jobs take 2 to 6 days on average, with no guarantee.
The assessment and written quote are free and are provided within 1 to 2 days. An urgent assessment and quote costs $500 and is done in 2 to 3 hours, on the same day.
In all data recovery cases, success is never guaranteed. When we provide you your obligation free quote, we will give you an idea of what your success chances are based on past recoveries that are similar to yours. Rest assured that when you use Payam Data Recovery, you have the highest chance of success!
Only the $500 attempt fee. We offer a free assessment and a free written quote. The quote explains the cost, the attempt fee, your chances of success and the time involved, for your approval before we start. RAID and NAS recovery carries a $500 non-refundable attempt fee, which is part of the total quoted price, not an extra on top. You pay it to begin, and the balance only if we recover your data. See your files before you pay. You tell us which files matter most. Before you pay for the recovery, we’ll send you a list of your recovered files so you can check them. If any of the files you listed are missing, tell us and we’ll search again.
We do not offer an on-site service. Since all of our recovery equipment is located in our main lab, we can only perform RAID recoveries within our data recovery labs.
International customers are always welcome. The easiest way to reach us from overseas is by email at help@payam.com.au, which works in every time zone.
Power it off, do not rebuild, initialise or format, and do not run recovery software on the original drives. Label each drive with its slot number, then send all of the drives to us. The assessment and written quote are free.
Yes. We have labs in Sydney CBD, Rhodes NSW, Melbourne and Brisbane, and secure drop-off offices in Adelaide and Perth. Most RAID and NAS work is done at the local lab, and some specialist work goes to our main data recovery lab in Rhodes, NSW. Drives can also be posted to us from anywhere in Australia or overseas.
Your recovered files come back on an external drive. You can supply your own, or we can supply one from $180. The drive is formatted to suit the device the data came from: Mac format for Apple computers and Windows format for Windows computers, unless you ask for a different format when you approve the quote. Tell us which computer you will use the data on and we will format the drive to suit.
Prices are in Australian dollars and include GST unless the quote says otherwise. Return delivery after a successful recovery is free within Australia and to New Zealand. The only extra cost is a destination drive if you need us to supply one. We do not charge by the hour, so a job that takes longer does not cost you more.
Yes. You tell us which files matter most. Before you pay for the recovery, we’ll send you a list of your recovered files so you can check them. If any of the files you listed are missing, tell us and we’ll search again.
Every job has three service levels. Economy is our standard service. Priority and Emergency are faster and cost more, because our data recovery engineers work on weekends and after hours and stop work for other customers to speed up your job. Your quote shows the price and turnaround for each level, and you choose.
Yes. You can pay by card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, PayPal or bank deposit (EFT). If you need more time, you can split the cost into instalments with Afterpay, Zip, Klarna or PayPal Pay in 4, using the account you already have.
Your data stays private. We only look at it as far as needed to do the recovery, and we handle personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles. After you collect your recovered data, or we post it to you, we keep a backup copy for two weeks in case you need another copy. After that the backup copy is erased for your privacy.
If you want the device back, ask when you approve the quote. We repair a device only as far as needed to recover the data, so most devices are not returned in working condition, and opening it to test it can mark, crack or destroy the case.
We do not provide forensic services, formal reports, chain of custody documents or expert evidence, except where a court orders us to attend.
Yes. Just give us your company name and ABN when you book in, or before you pay, and we will put them on your tax invoice.
First published 23 October 2026, 12:49 PM AEDT. Last updated 26 October 2026, 12:08 AM AEDT.
The information on this page is provided by Payam Toloo, founder and owner of Payam Data Recovery. This content is copyright and may not be reproduced on other websites without written permission. You are welcome to quote or reference it with a link to this page.
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International customers are always welcome. The easiest way to reach us from overseas is by email at help@payam.com.au, which works in every time zone.
