Seen this from a different angle: watched a rookie admin delete the only copy of the soon-to-be-production database, which was the result of a year of data-mangling/massaging before it could be put online for production .. saw him do the delete, nothing I could about it in time.

Spent a week recovering the data, a block at a time .. learned enough about the database filesystem to write an 'un-delete' tool, sold it after using it to successfully recover the original project, and have never looked back ..