Payam Data Recovery has been recovering data in Australia since 1998. It was founded in Sydney by Payam Toloo as a one-man business, and data recovery has been its only business ever since. Our customer records go back to the first job in 1998. They show over 300,000 successful recoveries, and the number grows by about 50 devices a day.
This page is the short history: how the business started, how the lab and its clean air equipment changed, the offices we have today, and the companies we have worked with along the way.
1997: one failed hard drive
In 1997 Payam was 18, had just finished school and was working in his first IT support job. Then his own 4 GB Western Digital hard drive failed, with everything he had on it and no backup. Three companies quoted between A$8,000 and A$18,000 to recover it. He had about A$200 in the bank.
So he taught himself. He bought a box of dead drives to learn from and to use as donor parts, built a small dust free chamber, swapped the parts on his own drive and got his files back. A few months later a colleague of his mother’s friend had the same problem, and he fixed that drive too. That was the first job. Payam tells the full story on the founder page.
1998: a one-man business
In 1998 Payam registered the business under his own name and gave up everything else to do only data recovery. For the first years it was a one-man business run from the family home in Sydney, with a phone line, a PO box and a growing pile of donor drives. Customers posted their drives in, and the data went back to them by post. The oldest copy of our website in the Internet Archive is from May 2002.
The 2000s: North Ryde, North Sydney and a Class 100 cleanroom
As business customers arrived, they wanted an office to walk into. The first office opened in North Ryde in Sydney, and Payam’s father joined the business and worked alongside him for 15 years. The business then outgrew North Ryde and moved to a much larger office in North Sydney, which was its home for many years.
In North Sydney we built a Class 100 cleanroom: a room with filtered air for opening hard drives, so that no dust settles on the platters while the heads are replaced. In the mid 2000s we opened in Melbourne, our first office outside Sydney. Brisbane followed a few years later, then Adelaide, Perth and Auckland.
2015: from a cleanroom to laminar flow cabinets
When the business relocated in 2015, the technology had moved on. Professional laminar flow cabinets had become so efficient that they could give a much higher air purity in a much smaller area than a whole room. Class 100 was the old name for that level of air cleanliness. The current standard name is ISO 5.
Today we use two professional laminar flow cabinets at our main data recovery lab in Rhodes, NSW. They give an anti-static, dust free and contaminant free work area for opening hard drives and replacing heads. Every hard drive that needs to be opened is handled there.
2016 and after: the Sydney CBD and Rhodes
In 2016 we opened a lab in the Sydney CBD, close to the Apple stores, to help customers whose Mac or iPhone had failed. Then we opened our main data recovery lab in Rhodes, NSW, where the most complex work is done and our spare parts library is kept.
The work changed too. Phones, MacBooks and Microsoft Surface computers now have their storage soldered to the logic board and encrypted, so recovering their data means repairing the board at component level under a microscope. We built that skill in our own labs.
Listed by Apple
Apple’s Australian support page on data recovery and warranty implications lists Payam Data Recovery as one of its recommended data recovery companies. You can read it on Apple’s support site. Apple notes that the listed companies are not Apple Authorised Service Providers and that Apple does not warrant their services.
Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba: past partnerships
In the past we held partnerships with Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba. Those arrangements ended as their management and their data recovery policies changed, and we are not a partner of any of them today. Their customer service, warranty and technical support staff still refer customers to us regularly.
2025: three labs become secure drop-off offices
Adelaide, Perth and Auckland did not have enough work to keep a full lab team busy every day. In 2025 we closed those three labs and kept the same addresses as secure drop-off offices with reception staff. Devices handed in there go to our Rhodes lab by overnight courier, and the same engineers do the work.
Our offices today
- Four full service labs in three cities: our main data recovery lab in Rhodes, NSW, plus the Sydney CBD, Melbourne CBD and Brisbane CBD.
- Three secure drop-off offices: Adelaide, Perth and Auckland, which send devices to Rhodes by overnight courier.
- Urgent jobs: at Rhodes, the Sydney CBD, Melbourne and Brisbane, you can bring a device in, get an urgent assessment and quote, approve Emergency service, and we start as quickly as possible.
- Local work: about 80% of jobs are done at the office that receives them. Damaged heads, failed SSD controllers or NAND chips, logic board repairs and chip-off work go to Rhodes at our cost.
The work is done by a team of specialist engineers in our own labs in Australia, never outsourced overseas. Find each address on our locations page.
How we work today
- Data recovery is our only business.
- The assessment and written quote are free, except for phones and tablets, which are a fixed price.
- Most recoveries are no fix, no fee. Some complex cases have an attempt fee, then a completion fee only if the recovery is successful.
- You see your files before you pay.
Read more about the business, the team and our labs on the About Us page, see what customers say on our reviews page, or check current prices on our data recovery cost page.
Need data recovered now?
Submit a job online, ask for a free quote or call 1300 444 800. For genuine emergencies after hours only, call 0404 872 926.
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.
