A system and method are provided for optimizing data recovery for a partially destroyed document by exploiting the localized nature of typical partial document destruction. The system and method physically lay out encoded document recovery information in a way such that the likelihood is increased of recovering the encoded document recovery information from typical cases of partial document destruction. The system and method are encoding-scheme neutral, and could employ encoding techniques such as DataGlyphs.TM. encoding as known in the art for encoding the document recovery information.