Category Archives: Disk Structures and File Systems

Disk Structures File Systems are vital for an operating system to locate your data on a hard disk. A chain of pointers, starting at the first sector of your drive eventually points to individual files.

On disk structures

Recover deleted Bitlocker partition using DMDE

Last few weeks I stumbled onto several cases where file recovery software didn’t detect these deleted partitions. And even though these tools can decrypt Bitlocker partitions, they have to be able to find it first. I used DMDE. In one case DMDE detected the partition straight away, which is boring so I won’t get into… Read More »

Using Disk Drill 6 – A short (p)review again (2025)

Disk Drill fan boy This is not a full blown review, I am working on that. Instead this is a quick evaluation of features I’d like to see in any file recovery tool. A set of features that in my opinion make the difference between a serious data recovery tool and a typical quickly thrown… Read More »

Disk Drill 6 sneak preview (GoPro Recovery) + Discount

I was asked to try Disk Drill 6 beta, in particular I was asked to comment on the new Action Camera Module that was specifically designed to recover video data from GoPro, DJI action cameras, but also for example ‘normal’ Sony cameras. What’s so special about Action Cam videos? What makes them hard to recover?… Read More »

Corrupt JPEG Files and how to fix them

In this blogpost we’ll look at: A good JPEG as point of reference JPEG header corruption and how to repair Header + part of image data damaged and repair Corruption in JPEG image data resulting in visual anomalies JPEGs beyond repair that no one likes to hear about First things first, what is repair and… Read More »

File system corruption and USBC folder and files..

This is a quick write up after some initial research into occurrence of sectors that start with the string USBC or 0x55534243. These are common cause for data loss and can be hard to recover from. I think I see why data recovery software is often unsuccessful as these sectors appear to be ‘inserted’ causing… Read More »

USB Stick kapot – Gegevens redden

Ze zijn zo handig maar ook zo kwetsbaar, USB sticks. Om gegevens uit wisselen, de delen, op te sturen. Om je gegevens altijd bij je te hebben ongeacht op welke PC je werkt. Maar zoals gezegd ook kwetsbaar! Kwetsbaarheid USB Sticks USB Sticks zijn kwetsbaar juist als je ze veel gebruikt (maar het tegenovergestelde is… Read More »

Can data be recovered from an erased or zero filled drive?

Overwriting Hard Drive Data: The Great Wiping Controversy Okay, this is another one that annoys me: The claim, the myth that certain three letter agencies can recover data from erased or zero filled hard drives. The claim that those can magically ‘read’ and reconstruct data from ‘latent magnetic residue’ (I am not making this up,… Read More »

Corrupted Micro SD Card freezes computer

If inserting a corrupted Micro SD Card, that you need to recover data from, freezes your computer, then this kind of puts you into a catch 22 situation. For recovery software to work the card needs to be detected and ID correctly. As long as it doesn’t you will be unable to recover your data.… Read More »

Some thoughts on signature based file recovery

But first, file system based recovery I am A ‘Windows person’ and deal with data recovery on file systems that were for the most part designed by Microsoft. As a consequence I can predict with reasonable certainty the chances of successful data recovery after you formatted your NTFS drive. Because I understand what such a… Read More »