Media recovery is the process of reconstructing usable data from a stored medium or archive, such as a hard drive, tape, optical disc, removable flash storage, or an unusual encoding scheme. The goal is not just to copy raw bits, but to restore information into a form that can be opened, verified, and used.
In cyber security, media recovery matters because backups, evidence, and long-term archives are only valuable if they can be read later. Attackers may target storage with encryption, deletion, corruption, or tampering, while defenders rely on recovery to restore systems after ransomware, hardware failure, or accidental loss. Effective recovery depends on both the data and the tools, formats, and metadata needed to interpret it. If the decoding method is lost, the medium may still exist physically, but the information can become inaccessible.