Payam Data Recovery - New Zealand

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Payam Data Recovery - New Zealand New Zealand's best data recovery company is Payam Data Recovery. Based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Specialising in recovering data from faulty/damaged hard disk drives, solid state drives, mobile phones, tablets, RAID arrays, NAS Units, memory cards and USB flash drives. See: www.payam.co.nz or phone 0800 000 189 (or for overseas callers +64 9 8877212).

16/10/2026

SD card suddenly asking to be formatted? Behind the scenes in our data recovery lab with a SanDisk card full of car racing footage.

This is a real case we worked on. A SanDisk 32GB SD card started demanding a format. An earlier attempt elsewhere had copied some files to a USB stick, but none of the videos would play.

How our data recovery engineer approached it:
1. He set the USB stick of broken clips aside and went back to the card itself.
2. He cloned the card sector by sector on the Atola Insight Forensic. It imaged cleanly to 100% with no read errors, so the chip was healthy and the damage was logical, in the file system.
3. Several standard recovery programs saved files with the right sizes and dates, but none of the videos would play. The footage used a high bit-rate codec that most tools were rebuilding just wrong enough to break playback.
4. Remembering an older job with a similar codec, he tried Disk Drill, a program he rarely needs. This time every clip played.
5. The corruption had stripped the file names and dates, so an AI assistant read the metadata inside each video and renamed everything back to its original name and timestamp.

All 21 clips, 22GB of footage, came back playable with their original names and dates. Start to finish, the job took about three hours.

A tip from the case: if a card asks to be formatted, do not format it and do not keep running recovery software on it. Those attempts can overwrite the structures a proper recovery needs.

New Zealand customers, including Auckland, are welcome to send their memory card in.
If you have a memory card like this, or know someone who does, email [email protected] or call 0800 000 189.
Based in Australia, international customers welcome!

15/10/2026

Dropped your external hard drive and now it won't work? Behind the scenes in our data recovery lab with a Seagate that hit a tile floor.

This is a real case we worked on. A 2.5 inch Seagate ST500LT012 external drive was sitting next to a laptop when the cable pulled it off the desk. It hit a tile floor, dented in one corner and stopped working. It held files and photos the owner could not lose.

How our data recovery engineer approached it:
1. Diagnostics showed one of the two read/write heads had failed from the impact. The files were still sitting on the platters untouched, but the drive could no longer read them.
2. On the PC-3000 he can turn individual heads on and off and skip the difficult areas first. So the first pass used the one good head to copy everything it could reach.
3. In the dust free laminar flow cabinet, he replaced the failed head with a matched donor head from one of our parts drives.
4. With both heads working, he finished the copy and focused the retries on the problem areas until the platters gave up the rest.

Every file came back, including all the photos, in good condition. The data was copied to a new external drive with a full file listing and a short video preview.

A tip from the case: do not keep plugging in a dropped drive to see if it works. A failed head can drag across the platters and scratch the surface where the data lives.

New Zealand customers, including Auckland, are welcome to send their drive in.
If you have a hard drive like this, or know someone who does, email [email protected] or call 0800 000 189.
Based in Australia, international customers welcome!

"Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations." – Zig ZiglarHDD, SSD, Phone, RAID, Apple device stopped working?...
15/10/2026

"Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations." – Zig Ziglar
HDD, SSD, Phone, RAID, Apple device stopped working? Contact us! We can help get your data back!

14/10/2026

NAS suddenly showing only a few of your files? Behind the scenes in our data recovery lab with a WD My Cloud RAID 5 from Papua New Guinea.

This is a real case we worked on. An international client in Papua New Guinea had a WD My Cloud NAS holding around 20TB. Suddenly only a handful of files were accessible, and the Veeam backups they needed looked gone. They had already tried recovery software at home and got nowhere, then sent the drives to our Sydney data recovery lab.

How our data recovery engineer approached it:
1. First round testing found no hardware fault on any of the three Seagate 8TB drives, which pointed to a file system problem.
2. WinHex showed each drive about 90% full of unique data, the pattern of a RAID set, almost certainly RAID 5.
3. The software flagged a missing fourth drive. The client sent it, and it turned out to be a Western Digital drive rather than a Seagate. He also checked for any sign of a hack or ransomware. Not this time.
4. A WD My Cloud stores files under system-generated codes and keeps the real names in a separate index database, so ordinary recovery tools just see meaningless codes. He browsed the reconstructed volume by hand, looking for shortcuts, log files and large folders full of subfolders.

Around 18TB of real files were there, sitting in two large shared network folders rather than as Veeam backups. He opened a few documents to confirm they worked, then saved everything to a new 26TB drive.

A tip from the case: when files disappear from a NAS, power it down and leave it alone. Forcing a rebuild or swapping drives in the wrong order can scramble the parity holding the data together.

New Zealand customers, including Auckland, are welcome to send their NAS drives in.
If you have a NAS like this, or know someone who does, email [email protected] or call 0800 000 189.
Based in Australia, international customers welcome!

"You only have one life, but if you do it right, one is enough." – Mae WestLost important files from a broken HDD, SSD, ...
14/10/2026

"You only have one life, but if you do it right, one is enough." – Mae West
Lost important files from a broken HDD, SSD, Phone, RAID or Apple device? Contact us! We can help get your data back!

13/10/2026

Time Machine drive still mounts, but your folders have vanished? Behind the scenes in our data recovery lab with a WD My Passport full of journals.

This is a real case we worked on. A customer in Western Australia posted us his WD My Passport 4TB, the Time Machine backup for his Mac. It still powered on and mounted as normal, but most of his folders and files had gone, including the journals and video journals he could not afford to lose.

How our data recovery engineer approached it:
1. Plugged it into an iMac. It opened and looked normal, but the missing folders were nowhere, even after calling the customer for the exact folder name.
2. UFS Explorer showed the first real clue: a backup still in progress with an older incomplete one behind it. The Time Machine backups had been interrupted and never finished cleanly.
3. Ran a deep scan with Data Rescue for Mac, which works through Time Machine backups where other tools stall on long folder names, and saved everything recoverable to a 10TB drive.
4. The Mac's own search still could not find the journals, so he used Claude Cowork with strict privacy controls switched on. It located the journals and video journals almost instantly.

Around 60GB of journals and video journals were copied to a new 2TB drive, with a full file listing and a video preview emailed first.

A tip from the case: when a Time Machine drive mounts but the data looks gone, do not delete the backup and start fresh, and do not run consumer software on it. The snapshots underneath may still hold your files.

New Zealand customers, including Auckland, are welcome to send their drive in.
If you have a Time Machine drive like this, or know someone who does, email [email protected] or call 0800 000 189.
Based in Australia, international customers welcome!

"There is no elevator to success – you have to take the stairs." – UnknownDead HDD, SSD, Phone, RAID, Apple device? Cont...
13/10/2026

"There is no elevator to success – you have to take the stairs." – Unknown
Dead HDD, SSD, Phone, RAID, Apple device? Contact us! We can help!

12/10/2026

Server RAID rebuilt itself, but the business software won't start? Behind the scenes in our data recovery lab with a Lenovo server running SAP.

This is a real case we worked on. A business ran its whole operation on one Lenovo server running SAP. Two of its eight SAS drives failed. The vendor replaced them and the RAID 5 rebuilt itself, but afterwards SAP would not launch at all, and SAP support could not find the files needed to bring it back. The business was effectively shut down.

How our data recovery engineer approached it:
1. An urgent assessment inside two hours, then the Emergency service.
2. Tested all ten drives, the eight from the server plus the two original failed ones, on an Atola Insight Forensic with its SAS extension. The two failed drives showed SMART warnings but were still reading. All eight in the server tested healthy.
3. Moved all eight into a 16-bay SAS enclosure and checked each one in WinHex. Every drive held data, including the two new replacements.
4. UFS Explorer detected an eight-disk RAID 5 with VMware on top. He browsed into the virtual machine files and tested the data inside. It was all there.

Around 1.7TB of data and 10 virtual machines were recovered in under 24 hours, copied to a new 26TB drive the customer supplied. The SAP files were inside those virtual machines the whole time.

A tip from the case: a rebuild that completes is not the same as a rebuild that worked. Another rebuild, a controller reset or a reinstall can overwrite data that is still recoverable.

New Zealand customers, including Auckland, are welcome to send their server drives in.
If you have a server like this, or know someone who does, email [email protected] or call 0800 000 189.
Based in Australia, international customers welcome!

"Dream big and dare to fail." – Norman VaughanHDD, SSD, Phone, RAID, Apple device stopped working? Contact us! We can he...
12/10/2026

"Dream big and dare to fail." – Norman Vaughan
HDD, SSD, Phone, RAID, Apple device stopped working? Contact us! We can help get your data back!

11/10/2026

Samsung T7 Shield SSD not recognised, power light on but nothing else? Behind the scenes in our data recovery lab, with a customer who flew in from the United States.

This is a real case we worked on. The customer flew to Sydney to hand over his Samsung T7 Shield 4TB portable SSD in person. The power light stayed on solid, but there was no data activity at all. The drive was fully encrypted, and his brief was clear: do not unlock it, do not decrypt it, do not open a single file. He wanted a complete sector-by-sector clone so he could unlock it himself.

How our data recovery engineer approached it:
1. Removed the outer case to reach the thin internal board, where the USB-C port, controller and memory chips all sit.
2. Checked the board for electrical faults, including a look with a thermal camera. The board looked sound.
3. On a normal high speed port the drive was completely dead. At the slower USB 2 speed on the PC-3000, it came to life and was detected. The damage was inside the USB-C port itself and only showed up at high speed.
4. A donor SSD was ready for a chip swap, but none of that was needed. He cloned every sector straight from the PC-3000 to a new drive.

Cloning 4TB at USB 2 speed took about three days. The result: a complete clone, with the encrypted data never once unlocked, decrypted or opened.

A tip from the case: he did exactly the right thing. He stopped plugging it in, ran no recovery software and never opened the case.

New Zealand customers, including Auckland, are welcome to send their SSD in.
If you have a portable SSD like this, or know someone who does, email [email protected] or call 0800 000 189.
Based in Australia, international customers welcome!

Address

139 Quay Street
Auckland
1010

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

6493522064

Website

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