Comprehensive search method allows you to find and virtually rebuild the directory structure of a damaged file system or to find lost files of known types by signatures if a file system can not be used.
If a file system is not seriously damaged then volumes may be opened before the scan completes. In the most complex cases different volume variants may be given. You should select and Open volume, reconstruct file system and recover files to estimate the quality of a variant. If the selected volume variant does not contain necessary files or files are recovered incorrectly you should continue the search or try another variant. There are indicators which allow preliminary estimating the quality of a variant (details are below). If data was moved (due to partition move/split/merge/resize operation) then some files may be recovered correctly from one volume variant, and others from another one, despite that files are visible on both volume variants.
It is recommended to scan selected area of a physical device (including old and new location of the volume if it was moved) rather than scanning a logical disk. The software may read beyond the selected area if it is necessary.
Open volume | Open volume selected in the list. |
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Save... | Save search log to a file. |
Load... | Load search log from a file (to continue previous search or to use previous search results). |
Start/Stop | Start/stop scan. If the scan area is not changed the scan will continue from the last point. |
Scan range | Select the area to scan. Is is possible to select one of the partitions or any drive extent. |
Menu | Besides, allows changing volume sorting order. |
The special search method allows detecting volumes without prior complete scan of the selected area. Scan is not continuous but discrete with increasing of the sampling frequency. Volumes with the most number of files are being found first.
The columns % and Check allow estimating data recovery quality of a found volume variant (the percentage and number of successful reference matchings).
Min. Size is the minimum size containing all files in the best volume FS blocks.
The column Indicators shows the absence (damage) ("-") or presence ("+") of the corresponding FS structures (B - boot sector/copy, F - FAT table/copy, R - root directory).
The column Check shows the number of found directories corresponding to the volume variant.
File signatures are used to find lost files if FS cannot be used. Additionally file signatures are used as reference points to calculate NTFS and exFAT volumes.