Five days after after telling Sidekick customers that data stored on their phones “almost certainly has been lost,” Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) now says that is in fact not the case. In a note to T-Mobile Sidekick customers, Microsoft SVP Roz Ho says her company—which owns Sidekick developer Danger—has “recovered most, if not all, customer data.” Sidekick users will get their data restored “as soon as possible,” she says.

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Hoz goes on to say that the outage was caused by a “system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up.” Fine. But Microsoft is still not saying how that happened. There have been reports that employee sabotage may have been involved—and also that Microsoft had largely abandoned Sidekick development and support, something which could have contributed to the failure. Microsoft also now appears to be downplaying the breadth of the problem; Hoz, for instance, says the outage only “affected a minority of Sidekick users.” Can’t imagine that will be much consolation for the Sidekick owners who spent days without contacts, notes, photographs, and tasks.