This snippet made me laugh:
Unfortunately, unless you have a recent Time Machine or other backup, your data may be gone for good—unless you’re willing to pay for an expensive data recovery process. But then again, Ars readers are they sort that have regular backups, right?
I’ve recovered so much data for people over the past two years using a simple free Linux live CD and a simple free data recovery program (Photorec). I guess the “expensive” part is just buying an external hard drive to put all the previously deleted data on after it’s recovered. But an external hard drive is always a good thing to have.