I've actually thought about this on and off for a while, and I think the better approach would be like what was done recently with the spam question - broaden it a bit to basically an I lost a bunch of data, what do I do? question. That way we can hit the issue of taking backups in the first place, and leave actual data recovery techniques as the last or second-to-last resort they really ought to be.

I even thought about doing it answer your own question Q&A style after the last wave of my RAID array crashed, what do I do? questions, but I never got around to doing anything about it for some reason.

Anyway, I think that if one of the mods were to do like @ChrisS did with the spam canonical, it would go over best. I'd do it myself, but I'm not really sure if that's a good idea coming from just a user, or if it would get hammered for being a duplicate of the countless other questions out three or what have you, so I'm a bit gun-shy on it.

I've actually thought about this on and off for a while, and I think the better approach would be like what was done recently with the spam question - broaden it a bit to basically an I lost a bunch of data, what do I do? question. That way we can hit the issue of taking backups in the first place, and leave actual data recovery techniques as the last or second-to-last resort they really ought to be.

I even thought about doing it answer your own question Q&A style after the last wave of my RAID array crashed, what do I do? questions, but I never got around to doing anything about it for some reason.

Anyway, I think that if one of the mods were to do like @ChrisS did with the spam canonical, it would go over best. I'd do it myself, but I'm not really sure if that's a good idea coming from just a user, or if it would get hammered for being a duplicate of the countless other questions out three or what have you, so I'm a bit gun-shy on it.