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

Is ReclaiMe still the recommended all-round data recovery tool?

The best all-round data recovery tool for end users. Every now and then I test against updated versions of most popular file recovery software out there. Until now updated versions of Stellar, Clever Files (Disk Drill), Easeus, Minitool etc. did not make me change my mind. In fact, some of the updated versions feel like… Read More »

Partial full format on SD Card, can I recover photos?

You can not recover if you let a full format complete. It depends if the full format was allowed to complete. A full format overwrites data. Overwritten data can not be recovered. So in case the format operation had the chance to complete, you can stop reading here, nothing and no one will be able… Read More »

Disk Drill Review | A real review (2 & 4)

Disk Drill Review: The other week I was given a PRO license for Disk Drill Pro by my buddy Luke Coughey from https://www.recoveryforce.com/. Yes, this is legal, he was offered licenses to give away for promotional purposes. I have looked at Disk Drill in the past and it appears not much has changed since. Which… Read More »

JPEG photo recovery from sd card using Piriform Recuva

Recently I was offered a batch of corrupt JPEGs for repair that were recovered from a SD card using Piriform’s Recuva. The recovered files were not recognized by any image viewer as valid JPG files. This does not appear to be an uncommon thing. Recuva is a popular and the go-to file recovery tool for… Read More »

Tips on selecting the best file recovery software

In this post I’ll give you some tips on evaluating file recovery software. To tell good from bad data recovery software. If you have just lost data and are now searching for a solution you will find that are hundreds of tools available that all claim to be the best in getting your data back.… Read More »

Photos on SD card are corrupt

When you discover photos on your SD card are corrupt or the memory card itself is corrupt you should: Do as little as possible (read: nothing) with the card. Do NOT run chkdsk on the card itself! Do not format the card even if it asks you to! Instead: Create a disk image of the… Read More »

The volume does not contain a recognized file system – RAW file system

The error ‘The volume does not contain a recognized file system’ CHKDSK error message, is what I’d call a ‘catch-all’ error message. It is very generic and it can have multiple causes, but in essence Windows and chkdsk have trouble determining the file system on a volume whether this is on a hard disk or… Read More »

Can corrupt Canon CR2 RAW photos be repaired

Can corrupt Canon CR2 RAW photos be repaired? As expected there is no yes/no answer possible top this question. If you’re unable to open the file at all then perhaps, but definitive answer is only possible after closer examination of the file. Windows Photos will simply state: “It appears we don’t support this file format”… Read More »

Recover Canon CR2 RAW photos

Recover Canon CR2 RAW photos. Canon CR2 raw files contain unprocessed raw sensor data. Depending on the camera’s resolution they tend to be quite large and due to typical usage patterns (preview photo > dismiss/delete file > shoot new file etc.) the files become easily fragmented. Shoot video too? Then fragmentation is very likely to… Read More »