Brisbane · Established 2018 · Australia-wide mail-in
The engineers behind thedata recovery company
Wildfire Data Recovery Brisbane is a lab run by the people who actually do the work. No call centre, no outsourcing, no invoice until you have seen your files.
“Had a massive problem with my iPhone X as it suffered water damage. It was successfully recovered by Viktor. The data off the old iPhone was put into the Cloud and I downloaded from there onto the new iPhone. Many thanks to Viktor who provides a great service.”
SWSteve W.Google review · 5 stars · water-damaged iPhone X
“Absolutely outstanding service from Wildfire Data Recovery! We came to them with several locked Samsung and ZTE mobile phones that we could no longer access. They were able to bypass the lost PIN numbers, recover the data, and also performed full forensic file analysis on each device. The level of detail and care is truly impressive.”
“This was my first time needing data recovery, and I’m so glad I went to Wildfire Data Recovery. After spilling coffee all over my laptop, I thought everything was lost, but Viktor was incredibly reassuring and got to work right away. He and his team are extremely fast, professional, and communicative throughout the process.”
“Wildfire Data Recovery were able to recover our BitLocker encrypted drive when we had all but given up on it. Communication was clear the whole way through and the price was exactly what we were quoted.”
“Excellent, professional service. Viktor kept us informed at every stage and recovered the data we needed for our operations. Highly recommend for anyone in the marine or inspection industry.”
“Great communication and a great result. Would use again without hesitation.”
PCPhillip C.Google review · 5 stars
Reviews are reproduced word for word from our public Google Business Profile. Read them on Google.
Who is Wildfire Data Recovery?
Wildfire Data Recovery Brisbane is a data recovery company, founded in 2018, that recovers files from failed and damaged storage (hard drives, SSDs, phones, memory cards, RAID arrays and NAS boxes) for clients across Australia. The work is done in our own lab by our own engineers. Diagnostics are free, you see a file list before you pay, and if we cannot recover your data there is no recovery fee.
We are a small team on purpose. The person who assesses your device is the person who works on it and the person you can ring back.
Our story
Three engineers, $3,000, and a lot of drives nobody else would touch
We started Wildfire Data Recovery Brisbane because too many Australians were being told their data was “unrecoverable” when it simply wasn’t. Here is how the last eight years actually went.
2018 · The garage
Founded in Brisbane with second-hand kit
Viktor Burcevski, David Williams and Martin Daniels pooled $3,000 and bought the professional recovery hardware they had been borrowing. The first client was a Brisbane wedding photographer who had lost an entire ceremony. We got every photo back. She told her friends, and they told theirs.
2020 · Out of the garage
A proper bench, and the first cleanroom-class workstation
Volume outgrew the garage. We moved into a dedicated lab space and invested in an ISO Class 5 laminar-flow workstation so platter transplants and head swaps could be done properly rather than hopefully. A donor parts library started accumulating in the same year. Today it runs to hundreds of matched heads, PCBs and motors.
2022 · Phones and forensics
Mobile and forensic work becomes half the bench
Phones stopped being a side line. Encrypted iPhones, locked Androids, chip-level board repair and evidence-grade extraction for legal matters became a standing part of the workload, which is why the lab now runs mobile forensic tooling alongside the drive kit.
2024 · Australia-wide
Free Express Post intake for the whole country
Most Australians do not live near a recovery lab, and the ones who do usually cannot leave work to drive to it. We put a prepaid Australia Post Express label at the front of the process so a drive in Darwin gets the same bench as a drive in Brisbane, at no postage cost to the client.
Today
15,000+ recoveries, and the same rule as day one
We have completed more than 15,000 recoveries. The rule has not changed: you find out what is recoverable before you spend anything, you see the file list before you pay, and if the data does not come back neither does an invoice.
An open drive on the bench. Most of this job is patience, not heroics.
Why the honesty matters to us. This industry has a habit of quoting big, promising everything and explaining nothing. We would rather tell you on day one that your case is a long shot than take your money and tell you on day thirty.
That is also why the numbers on this page are the real ones. Our success rate is 92%, not 99%. The 8% are real jobs with real people attached, and pretending otherwise would not do them any favours.
The people
Who will actually be holding your device
Three engineers, one bench, no account managers in between. When you call, you get one of them.
Viktor Burcevski
Founder & lead recovery engineer
Runs the lab and takes the hardest cases himself: forensic extractions, board-level work and the jobs other labs have already returned. Most of the reviews on this page name him because he is usually the one who rang the client back.
Forensic recovery
Board-level repair
Mobile extraction
Encrypted media
What Viktor works on
Chip-off and in-system NAND work, micro-soldering on damaged boards, iOS and Android extractions where the owner holds the passcode, BitLocker and FileVault volumes with the client’s key, and evidence-sensitive matters that need documented handling and hashing.
David Williams
Co-founder · mobile & encryption
Co-founded Wildfire in 2018 and owns the mobile side of the bench: phones and tablets that are smashed, drowned, dead or locked, plus the encryption problems that come attached to all of them.
iPhone & iPad
Android & Samsung
Encryption
Water damage
What David works on
Liquid-damage triage and ultrasonic cleaning, display and charge-circuit faults that block access to otherwise intact storage, Secure Enclave and hardware-keyed Android devices, and the honest conversations about what a locked device can and cannot give up.
Martin Daniels
Electrical engineer
The electrical engineering half of the founding trio. Power faults, burnt PCBs, shorted controllers and the RAID and NAS rebuilds where the failure is in the electronics rather than the platters.
PCB repair
Power faults
RAID & NAS
Donor matching
What Martin works on
Diagnosing dead drives that never spin up, transplanting ROM between boards so a donor PCB will actually address the right platters, multi-disk array reconstruction where the controller lost the geometry, and keeping the donor library matched and catalogued.
Inside the lab
The bench, and what is actually on it
Recovery is a hardware problem before it is a software problem. This is the kit the work is done with, all of it in-house, in Brisbane. Nothing is shipped offshore.
PC-3000 systems
Firmware-level access to failing hard drives and SSDs: the tool that talks to a drive’s service area when the drive will no longer talk to a computer. Used for head-map edits, module repair and slow imaging of dying media.
Mobile forensic tooling
Cellebrite-class extraction for iOS and Android, used for owner-authorised recovery and for evidence-sensitive matters where the handling has to stand up to scrutiny. Full-filesystem extraction where the device and passcode allow it.
ISO Class 5 laminar-flow workstation
Filtered, positive-pressure air for anything that requires a drive to be opened: head-stack replacement, platter transplants, contamination cleanup. A drive opened on an ordinary desk is a drive you only get one look at.
Donor parts library
Hundreds of matched heads, PCBs and motors on the shelf. A head swap only works with a genuinely compatible donor, and the difference between “same model” and “same firmware revision and head map” is the difference between a recovery and a scrapped drive.
Micro-soldering & chip-off
Rework stations and microscopes for board-level repair: reflowing a power IC, rebuilding a torn pad, or lifting a NAND package off a dead board and reading it directly when the board itself cannot be revived.
Write-blocked imaging & hashing
Source media is read read-only and hashed before anything else happens. Every recovery works from an image, never the original, so a second attempt is always possible and the evidence value of the original is never spent.
The Brisbane lab.Mobile extraction in progress.Board-level work under the scope.
How it works
What happens between “I think I’ve lost everything” and getting your files back
Four steps, and you can stop at any point before you have agreed to anything.
Send it, or bring it in
Tell us what happened and we email a prepaid Australia Post Express label. Brisbane locals can book a drop-off instead. Keep a damaged device powered off until it reaches us.
Postage on us
Free diagnostic
We find out what is actually wrong (mechanical, electronic, firmware, logical or a combination) and what that means for your odds. You get a written assessment and a fixed price.
$0
You approve, we recover
Nothing starts until you say yes to a number you have seen in writing. Work happens on an image of your media, never the original, so a difficult job can be attempted more than once.
Fixed quote
Proof, then payment
You get a list of what was recovered before you pay. Data comes back on an encrypted drive or a secure download. No recovery, no recovery fee.
Proof first
15,000+Recoveries completed
92%Measured success rate
4.8 ★Across 95 Google reviews
24/7Emergency intake
Success rate is measured across completed jobs, not attempted ones, and it is deliberately not rounded up. Review figures are taken from our live Google Business Profile.
Straight answers
What we promise, and what we will not
Most complaints in this industry come from expectations set badly at the start. So here is the boundary, in writing, before you send us anything.
What you can hold us to
A free diagnostic with a written outcome, whether or not you go ahead.
A fixed price agreed before any recovery work starts, with no variations after the fact.
A list of recovered files before you pay a recovery fee.
No data, no fee. If the recovery fails, the recovery charge does not apply.
Your media handled read-only and hashed, and the work done on an image.
Your data stays in Australia, on our equipment, and is destroyed on request.
What we will not tell you
That every job succeeds. Roughly one in twelve does not, and severe platter damage or overwritten data can be genuinely final.
That we can unlock a device for someone who is not its owner. Locked phones need the owner’s passcode and proof of ownership.
That deleted data is always still there. Once a modern SSD or phone has purged a block, no lab recovers it, including us.
That a price can be quoted properly over the phone, sight unseen. A guess helps nobody.
That you should keep retrying a clicking drive at home. Each power-up costs you odds.
Before you choose anyone
How to choose a data recovery company in Australia
Four questions worth asking any lab, including this one. If a provider dodges them, that is your answer.
Do you see proof before you pay?
A file list before payment is the single best protection against paying for a recovery that did not really happen.
Is the work done in-house?
Plenty of “labs” are resellers who post your drive to someone else. Ask where the bench is and who is on it.
Is the price in writing, in advance?
A fixed written quote before work starts. Beware “from $X” pricing that grows once your drive is already opened.
Where does your data end up?
Ask whether anything leaves the country, how long copies are retained, and how they are destroyed afterwards.
Where we work
A Brisbane lab that covers the whole country
The bench is in Brisbane. The intake is national: we send a prepaid Australia Post Express label, so a drive posted from Darwin or Hobart gets the same engineers and the same process as one dropped off in person, and the postage costs you nothing.
If you are local and would rather hand it over, call first. The lab is appointment-based so that someone who can actually look at your device is there when you arrive.
Call before attending any location. All sites are appointment-based.
Questions people actually ask
Wildfire Data Recovery Brisbane: your questions answered
Who will actually work on my device?
One of three engineers (Viktor Burcevski, David Williams or Martin Daniels), depending on whether your problem is mechanical, electronic, mobile or forensic. There is no separate sales team and no outsourcing: the person who assesses your device works on it, and is the person you speak to when you ring.
How long has Wildfire Data Recovery been operating?
Since 2018, in Brisbane. We have completed more than 15,000 recoveries in that time, across hard drives, SSDs, phones, memory cards, RAID arrays and NAS systems.
What does the free diagnostic actually include?
A real assessment on the bench, not a phone estimate: what has failed, whether the media is safe to keep powering, what is likely recoverable, and a fixed price to attempt it. You get that in writing and you are free to walk away. Standard consumer diagnostics cost nothing and carry no obligation.
What is your success rate, honestly?
92% across completed jobs. We publish the measured figure rather than a rounder, prettier one. The cases that fail are usually severe platter damage, media that was already overwritten, or devices that were powered up repeatedly after failing, which is exactly why we ask you to stop trying at home and call.
Can you get into a locked phone?
For the owner, with the passcode, usually yes. Without the passcode, we can tell you what is technically feasible for that specific model and era, but we do not promise unlocks and we require proof of ownership before touching a locked device. Any lab that guarantees a bypass sight unseen is selling you something it cannot deliver.
Do you handle forensic work for legal matters?
Yes. Evidence-sensitive matters are handled read-only, hashed on intake, and documented so the chain of handling is clear, with recovered and located material labelled distinctly. If your matter has specific reporting requirements, tell us at intake so the work is scoped correctly from the start.
Is my data confidential, and where does it go?
Your data stays in Australia, on our own equipment. Nothing is sent offshore and nothing is stored in a third-party cloud as part of the recovery. Working copies are destroyed on request once you have confirmed you have your files.
What does a recovery cost?
It depends entirely on what has failed. A logical recovery and a head-stack replacement are not the same job. The diagnostic is free and the quote is fixed and in writing before anything starts, so you always know the number before you commit. See the service pages for what is involved at each level.
Get in touch
Tell us what happened
Failed drive, drowned phone, dead NAS or a forensic matter: start with a conversation and a free diagnostic. You will know where you stand before you spend anything.
