ACELab Greatest Data Recovery 2023: International Recognition for the Turkey Earthquake Case

In the data recovery industry, a lab's reputation is measured not by the devices it owns but by the impossible cases it has solved. In 2023, DSET Information Technologies earned international recognition in the Socially Significant Data Recovery Recognition category of the ACELab Greatest Data Recovery competition, which is followed by professional data recovery experts worldwide. This recognition is based on a case carried out after the February 6, 2023 Turkey earthquake. This page was prepared to convey the background of the award, the structure of the competition, and the technical and human dimensions of the Turkey earthquake case, without inventing fake details and strictly within the publicly available frame.

What is the ACELab Greatest Data Recovery competition

ACE Laboratory is the manufacturer of the PC-3000 hardware-and-software family that the professional data recovery industry has used for many years. The PC-3000 product line is one of the standards independent labs use to recover data from physically damaged HDDs, SSDs, cards, and mobile devices. DSET has openly shared that it has used this hardware for years; for a detailed introduction, the what PC-3000 is page can be used as a reference.

Every year, ACELab invites user labs from around the world to enter the competition with the toughest cases they have solved. Known as Greatest Data Recovery, this competition is a public recognition platform where labs submit their real cases for jury evaluation. Its meaning for the industry is this: the competition is not a marketing game, the jury is mostly made up of independent technical referees, and the evaluation is based on the technical content of the case file rather than on customer testimony.

The category structure of the 2023 competition

The 2023 Greatest Data Recovery competition evaluated cases along three main axes:

• Most Complex Data Recovery Case, the most technically difficult case.
• Most Innovative Approach, a case solved with an unconventional method.
• Socially Significant Data Recovery Recognition, a socially meaningful case.

DSET received international recognition in the last category. Rather than measuring technical mastery alone, this category foregrounds the degree to which the recovered data touches human life. It officially makes visible a truth the data recovery industry has long discussed: a lab is not only a commercial actor that prevents the financial losses of a corporate customer, it also serves a public function by protecting individuals' digital memory in moments of social crisis.

February 6, 2023 Turkey earthquake: case context

On the morning of February 6, 2023, two major earthquakes centered on Kahramanmaras Pazarcik struck the southern region of Turkey. The official records were shared by AFAD. The earthquakes were felt across 11 provinces, tens of thousands of buildings collapsed or became unusable, and millions of people were displaced. No private details about individual victims are shared on the DSET page, because in line with personal data and privacy policy the case is kept anonymous. The purpose of this page is not advertising, but to explain the background of the award.

The typical damage profile of devices from the earthquake zone

Digital devices pulled from under the rubble carry a damage profile very different from ordinary lab cases. Based on field observations, the typical problem categories that the DSET team has shared with the public are as follows:

• Physical trauma, in laptops and phones trapped under building collapse, body integrity is mostly lost, the mainboard bends, and storage modules break loose.
• Water and moisture, prolonged moisture exposure after fire suppression or rain causes corrosion and fungal growth on printed circuit boards.
• Concrete dust, especially when HDDs are not hermetically sealed, fine particles that enter the head-disk gap cause irreversible scratches on the platter (magnetic layer) on the first spin-up.
• Fire and thermal shock, nearby fires loosen solder joints and initiate thermal degradation in NAND chips.
• Crushing and bending, especially in 2.5-inch laptop HDDs, body deformation creates a mechanical lock in the head parking area.

Each of these damage types requires not a classic logical recovery flow, but a disciplined technique based on a multi-lesson set, as covered on the data recovery anatomy page. DSET's 20 years of field experience played a decisive role in expanding capacity after the earthquake.

DSET's additional capacity service during the earthquake period

In the earthquake weeks, the DSET lab inside Hacettepe University Teknokent restructured its pricing policy and priority order for devices arriving from the earthquake zone. According to the team's public statement, devices pulled from under the rubble were assigned a different priority from ordinary corporate cases. The emphasis on social responsibility is, not in words on the page but historically, the justification for the award.

Adana and Gaziantep are two cities that stand out in terms of service coverage. For detailed information, the Adana data recovery and Gaziantep data recovery pages can be reviewed. Device logistics are handled to the Ankara-based lab with a secure transport protocol.

Anonymous case story: an earthquake survivor's family photographs

The case that the ACELab jury evaluated in the Socially Significant category in 2023 was shared with the public anonymously. A digital storage device containing the photographs of the survivor's lost family from a previous generation had been pulled with difficulty from under the rubble after the earthquake. The body of the device was deformed, there were concrete dust residues on it, and fire marks were visible on its surface. For the survivor, the loss was not monetary, but an irretrievable loss of family memory.

The case was not placed in a classic priority order at DSET's Hacettepe Teknokent lab, because for the team the situation was a crisis operation. Within the frame of the page's ban on fabricated detail, the process was carried out as a general technical flow in the following steps:

1. Case intake and photographing, documenting the condition in which the device arrived, an anonymous case protocol with the customer.
2. Clean room preparation, opening the device in an environment cleared of dust particles; visual context is shared on the Hacettepe Teknokent lab microscope gallery page.
3. Low-level access with PC-3000, accessing the firmware and service area directly from the storage module, bypassing the software layer.
4. Imaging at the platter or NAND level, the donor device protocol if a head or controller swap is needed.
5. Rebuilding the file system from the recovered raw data, integrity verification of the photo files.
6. Anonymous delivery to the customer and data destruction protocol, a KVKK-compliant workflow.

The resolution time and all the technical steps of the case have not been shared with the public in detail, because both the survivor's privacy and the fact that the advanced techniques used are standard industry practice mean that the scope of disclosure is narrow.

Hamza Aytac Doganay's approach

The case was led by Hamza Aytac Doganay, DSET's founder and a digital forensics expert. He is the person who made the decision to change the team's priorities in the flow of devices during the earthquake period; for a detailed biography, the Hamza Aytac Doganay founder profile page is published in parallel. Based on his public statements, three behavior patterns can be highlighted:

• Team management, during the earthquake weeks the lab team restructured its shift system.
• Equipment priority, the clean room, PC-3000 units, and donor stock were blocked for earthquake cases.
• Patience, the decision to allow more than the usual timeframe to solve a single case is a choice grounded in the value of the survivor's family memory.

The ACELab jury's evaluation

ACELab's Socially Significant Data Recovery Recognition category ties the jury's decision not only to a case's technical difficulty but also to the meaning of the recovered data for the user. DSET's international recognition in this category in 2023 was announced publicly. As far as is known from industry literature, the criteria that stand out in the jury's evaluation are as follows:

• The social impact context of the case, that is, whether it is of the personal-memory, humanitarian-aid, or public-loss type.
• The lab having set its commercial calculation aside when accepting the case.
• The ethical standards used during the resolution process, customer confidentiality, and local data protection compliance such as KVKK.
• The result being repeatable, that is, the operational capacity that shows the lab can demonstrate the same approach under similar crisis conditions.

DSET submitted its file in light of these criteria. At the end of 2023, the category was awarded to a lab from Turkey. This is one of the important recognitions that the Turkish data recovery industry has earned on the world stage in recent years.

What the award means for DSET

This recognition produces value for DSET on three separate planes:

1. International technical recognition. A Turkish lab receiving recognition in a competition followed by professionals worldwide validated the team's technical capacity before an independent jury. This is far stronger evidence than customer testimony or marketing rhetoric.

2. Industry reputation. With its corporate identity based in Hacettepe Teknokent, Ankara, DSET has become a reliable reference point for both corporate customers and individual survivors. The data recovery guide as a whole is detailed on the Turkey data recovery guide 2026 page.

3. Customer trust. Digital forensics and data recovery services assume that the device the customer hands over to the firm contains confidential and valuable data. International recognition eases this trust relationship at the pre-contract stage.

Turkey's data recovery industry on the world stage

Turkey's digital forensics and data recovery industry has undergone rapid technical maturation over the past 10 years. DSET's recognition contributed to the industry's international visibility. The phrase international recognition in this page's title is not hyped marketing language, but expresses a directly observable outcome.

E-E-A-T evidence: who, when, why, how

Google and other search engines evaluate content within health, finance, and the YMYL scope through the E-E-A-T framework, that is, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Data recovery and digital forensics are high-risk areas in this scope. This page openly answers the four core evidence questions of the award in terms of E-E-A-T:

• Who? DSET Information Technologies, founder Hamza Aytac Doganay, the Hacettepe Teknokent Ankara lab.
• When? 2023, the ACELab Greatest Data Recovery 2023 competition after the February 6, 2023 Turkey earthquake.
• Why? A contribution to a meaningful case in the Socially Significant Data Recovery Recognition category.
• How? PC-3000-based lab discipline, clean room, donor stock, anonymous case protocol, KVKK-compliant workflow.

The clear answer to these four questions turns the page's content from an award announcement into an evidence-based statement of lab transparency.

Emphasis on social responsibility

In the data recovery industry, commercial value is mostly calculated from the monetary worth of the lost corporate archive. DSET's 2023 award, however, represents a different emphasis: the non-monetary value of a survivor regaining their family memory. The page deliberately underlines this difference, because the real test of a lab's capacity emerges in moments of crisis.

Contact and emergency earthquake-zone support

DSET, in operation since 2003 at its lab in Hacettepe University Teknokent, Ankara, accepts emergency earthquake-zone device cases with priority. For devices pulled from the rubble after destruction, or damaged by water, fire, or concrete dust, it is recommended to obtain information by phone before delivering the device, because even the pre-transport method affects the device's recoverability rate.

Contact:

• Address: Hacettepe University Teknokent, Ankara
• Phone: +90 536 662 38 09
• Service coverage: Nationwide across Turkey, with priority acceptance for the emergency earthquake zone

DSET sees its ACELab Greatest Data Recovery 2023 international recognition not as a closing but as a beginning. The Turkey earthquake case made the lab's understanding of social responsibility visible at an industry scale, and it is committed to sustaining the same discipline in future cases.