Comprehensive search method allows you to find and virtually rebuild the directory structure of a damaged file system.
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 column Check may be used to estimate the recovery quality of a found volume variant (it corresponds to the number of correct directory indexes on the volume). When a volume is selected the status lines display the estimated percentage of found volume files and probable quality (including removed indexes), the number of found files and estimated total number of files.
Min. Size is the minimum volume size (in sectors) containing all files in the best MFT fragments of a volume.
MFT Volume Start #1 and Volume Start #2 are possible volume starts for a given MFT fragment.
Volume Mod = Volume Start mod Cluster size
MFT Mod = MFT Cluster Start mod Cluster size
The sign "minus" ("-") in the columns Boot FAT1 FAT2 Root indicates the absence (damage) of the corresponding file system structures (boot sector, main FAT table, FAT table copy, root directory).
The column Found shows the number of directories found and allows estimating approximately the recovery quality of a volume variant.
Values in the columns Boot FAT1 FAT2 Root are the sizes (in sectors) of the corresponding structures.