The correct answer is to prioritize restoring access to critical data because critical data is essential for the operation of key business functions, and its accessibility is paramount to resume normal business operations quickly after a disaster. Restoring access to non-critical data, while still important, does not take precedence over critical data in a disaster recovery situation. Although hardware and software restoration are also important, they do not directly concern the immediate availability of critical data, which is why they are not the best answers in this context.