Andy Yun does a bit of data recovery:
Almost all of us have experienced a time when someone incorrectly modifies or deletes a subset of data in a database. And usually the only recourse is to run a database restore to get the data that we need back.
But… what if we cannot simply run a RESTORE operation over the entire database. Maybe the accident occurred a few hours prior and you cannot roll everything back. You need to do a side-by-side RESTORE.
But… what if the database in question is absolutely massive and will take hours to restore? And what if your server doesn’t have enough available storage to fit a second copy of that database at all?
Andy has answers to these questions. Granted, they require some expensive (and very good) hardware and a proper configuration of said hardware, but it does work beautifully.