This document discusses the preparation of test data for testing data recovery tools. It describes the types of test data needed, including real and synthetic data. Real data provides diverse scenarios but is bulky, while synthetic data can be tailored but may not represent all cases. Various types of damaged hard drives are also needed for testing. Significant time is required to obtain, install operating systems on, and configure disks with the necessary test data, including databases. Both hardware and software need to be thoroughly tested using extensive real and synthetic data to ensure data recovery tools perform as expected.