Recovery methodsTechnical

Data Recovery Workflow: Source to Validation

How a recovery job moves from preserving the source through imaging, reconstruction and extraction to validation of the recovered data.

Preserve the source state

Before changing partitions, repairing a file system or rebuilding an array, identify what the source actually is: a physical device, a RAID member set, a virtual disk, an image, or a storage pool. Record the configuration and avoid unnecessary writes.

Acquire readable data

If the source is unstable, the acquisition strategy matters. A recovery-oriented image can prioritize easy regions, record unreadable areas and postpone expensive retries. Healthy sources can usually be copied more simply.

Reconstruct the storage layer

Recovery software may need to reconstruct a partition layout, RAID geometry, volume manager, virtual disk chain or file-system structure before files become meaningful. This can often be done virtually without writing repaired metadata back to the source.

Extract to separate storage

Recovered files should be copied to another healthy destination. The recovery destination is not the damaged source, and it should not be the only working copy of an important image.

Validate the result

A directory tree that looks correct is not proof that the contents are intact. Important files should be opened or structurally checked, and samples should cover different directories and regions.

Practical rule

Preservation, reconstruction, extraction and validation are different jobs. Keep them separate so a mistake in a later stage does not destroy the state needed for an earlier one.