I got a call today from the platform owner, there was a bug in the code and some records got deleted over 2 weeks (3 records every day on average). He gave me a list with the records and when they got deleted but the time is in HH:mm. I restored one backup to this time also 1 min before but still didn't find this record. He said there is a chance the record got created and deleted at the same time.
I feel I am dead in the water. Can anyone help?
IF the database is running in FULL recovery mode and you can somehow manage to restore the transaction log file from the time the DELETE statement ran, then there is a chance that you could recover the actual statements that were executed by reading the actual transaction log.
The way to do this requires a 3rd party tool though. It's called ApexSQL Log and it has a free trial download which you could use to test it out.
To understand how to use this tool properly, the creators of it have published an evaluation guide that walks through common scenarios of reading transaction logs.
ApexSQL Log evaluation guide for first time users – High level walkthrough with links to core topics
