DriveSavers, a data recovery firm in Novato, California, has a lobby museum called the Museum of Bizarre Diskasters. On display: a laptop burned shut in a house fire ("like an oyster," an engineer said), a smartphone shredded by a snowblower, and a second phone bisected by a monorail. Autographed photos of satisfied customers cover the walls: Buzz Aldrin, Gonzo the Muppet, Willie Nelson, Gerald Ford, Sidney Poitier (who rescued a memoir draft), and Khloé Kardashian (whose phone had gone swimming). The company handles twenty thousand inquiries a month, at prices that can run to six figures for enterprise servers. Steve Burgess sold his own recovery company to DriveSavers' founders and articulated the central paradox: once you have your data, it feels worthless; lose it and, as he put it, "it's worth an arm and a leg and their children." The company employs a "data crisis counselor," a role that exists because calls from desperate customers can veer into therapy.…