Often overlooked part of incident response

Has anyone else noticed that during incident response the real problem often starts after containment?

Systems get wiped or reimaged quickly to remove the infection, and only later teams realize important local user data or shared folders were never properly backed up. At that point Windows won’t mount the drive and access is gone while the business is already down.

In a similar case we had to pull documents directly from the disk before rebuilding the machine — a recovery scan (we tried Stellar Data Recovery) was basically the only way to extract user files before formatting.

Are others seeing this gap between cleanup and actual data recovery as well?

This topic was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by Nina Calder.

Windows data recovery

All Replies

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

Nina Calder

Participant

February 19, 2026 at 8:47 am

Thanks everyone for the input! Really helpful discussion.

Big takeaway for me is not to rush into wiping or reinstalling a system before checking the files that’s where most of the real loss happens.

Appreciate all the shared experiences. Marking this as resolved

Orin Thorne

Participant

February 19, 2026 at 8:41 am

YEAH, IT happens all the time.

People rush to wipe/reinstall the PC to remove the infection, then realize the important files were only stored locally. Once the drive is overwritten, recovery gets much harder.

Better flow: isolate → preserve/clone the drive → attempt recovery → then rebuild. Data preservation should come before cleanup.?

Jace Elric

Participant

February 19, 2026 at 5:11 am

Yeah, happens all the time.

People rush to disconnect and reinstall Windows to remove the infection, but no one checks the local files first. After the rebuild, they realize all the documents/accounting data were only on that PC.

Better approach: isolate the system, preserve/clone the drive, try recovery, then rebuild.

Cleaning the malware is easy & the real loss usually comes from wiping the data too quickly.

deken

Participant

February 18, 2026 at 8:25 am

The problem is that ‘containment’ usually looks more like a controlled demolition. Teams are so obsessed with killing the infection that they burn the whole house down just to catch one spider, then act shocked when the user has nowhere to live. If you don’t pause to rescue files first, you aren’t ‘responding’ to an incident you’re just a cleanup crew making a bigger mess.

deken

Participant

February 18, 2026 at 8:20 am

The problem is that everyone wants to be the hero who fixes the ‘broken’ computer in ten minutes. They nuked the infection, sure, but they nuked the user’s life’s work along with it. Speed is almost always the enemy of your data

Ezra Flint

Participant

February 18, 2026 at 5:34 am

Totally get that. Most people just focus on getting the system back up and running, and by then, the data is already gone. Honestly, unless you have a solid backup, tools like Stellar are your last shot before you’re stuck paying thousands at a recovery lab. It’s a huge gap that most teams don’t even think about until it’s too late.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)