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About

What this site is, and how it's built

Data Recovery Cases is an independent reference catalog: a plain-language explanation of what actually happens in twenty-six common data-loss scenarios, a directory of the recovery software and hardware involved, and a directory of physical recovery labs organized by region. Nothing on the site is sponsored, and no company appears here because it paid to.

How the catalog is written

Each of the twenty-six case articles follows the same shape on purpose: what's actually happening technically, how recoverable that really is, the general approach a professional would take, and — usually the most important part — the one thing not to do that turns a recoverable case into an unrecoverable one. The goal throughout is to say plainly when a case is genuinely DIY-friendly and when it isn't, rather than defaulting to either extreme. Software, Tools, and Hardware are separate directories rather than folded into the case articles, because a product list reads very differently from an explanation of what's actually going wrong on your drive — the case articles link out to the specific software, tool, or hardware page that's actually relevant to that scenario, not a generic list. Terms that come up across more than one article — TRIM, RAID, a write-blocker, and the rest — are collected in one place in the glossary.

How the Providers directory is built

The Providers section has two tiers, and both use a plain, stated bar rather than a subjective one. The multi-country networks at the top of that page are included only if they operate dedicated physical facilities in more than one country, with a rating checked at the flagship or headquarters location. The by-region directory below it is more permissive on review count — a handful of genuine positive reviews counts the same as hundreds — but not on evidence: a company with no independently-checkable rating anywhere is left out rather than assigned a guessed or self-reported number. Each region page states its own version of this bar and is explicit about which countries were researched and came up empty, rather than silently omitting them. The directory is not exhaustive, and a country's absence means it hasn't produced a verifiable candidate yet, not that no data-recovery labs exist there.

Relationship to data-recovery-practice.com

Several pages on this site link to data-recovery-practice.com, a hands-on recovery service, for readers who'd rather have someone look at their specific case than read a general explanation of one like it. That relationship is disclosed here rather than left implicit. It has no bearing on how any case article is written, how the Providers directory's inclusion criteria are applied, or which companies are listed — a listed provider gets no different treatment for being a competitor to that service, and none of the labs, software vendors, or tool makers covered on this site paid for placement or a favorable mention.

Corrections

The Providers directory in particular changes over time — labs open, close, get acquired, or improve to the point they'd now clear the bar. If something here is wrong, out of date, or missing a company you know operates legitimately and meets the stated criteria, let us know and it'll get checked against the same bar as everything else on the page.