When may deleted record recovery be impossible from a database?

• A. If it has had many write operations since the records were deleted
• B. If it has had few writes
• C. If there is a recent backup
• D. If the system is offline

Answer: (A)

Data recovered after deletion hinges on whether the storage space previously held by the records has been overwritten by subsequent writes. When many write operations occur after deletion, those blocks are often reused for new data, replacing the original bytes. Once overwritten, the deleted records can no longer be recovered because the exact data no longer exists on disk. A recent backup would allow recovery by restoring from that backup, because the deleted data would be present in the backup even if it’s gone from the live store. Having few writes after deletion or the system being offline don’t inherently make recovery impossible; they just affect how likely it is that the original data remains intact or accessible.