Features
Three ways to scan, one goal: get the file back in a state you can actually open.
Three ways to scan
Start with the fastest option that fits your situation and work down the list. The first two take minutes; the third reads every sector of the device and is the last resort.
Quick scan
Seconds to minutes
Walks the existing file system and reports everything that is still addressable — including deleted entries, which remain in the directory until they're overwritten.
- Deleted files with names, paths and timestamps
- Deleted folders, browsable as a tree
- Existing files, useful when the volume won't mount
- No change to the disk
Use it when: you deleted a file, emptied the recycle bin, or lost a folder.
Partition scan
Finds lost volumes
Scans the device for file system signatures — the boot sectors of volumes that are no longer listed in the partition table. Where the other scans give you files, this one gives you back the volume itself: a normal, browsable drive with its real folder structure and file names, which you can then recover from as usual.
- Deleted, damaged or recreated partition tables
- Volumes lost when a disk was reinitialised
- Logical drives inside an extended partition
- Disks that show as entirely "unallocated"
- Multiple volumes found in a single pass
Use it when: a partition has disappeared from Explorer, a drive reports as unallocated or RAW, or Windows offers to format it.
Advanced scan
Reads every sector
Ignores the volume's own description of itself. Instead it reads the raw device and reconstructs the geometry from the directory records it actually finds, then follows cluster chains to rebuild multi-cluster directories.
- Wiped or damaged partition tables
- Overwritten boot sectors
- Formatted or re-partitioned volumes
- Unallocated space and whole-disk targets
Use it when: the partition scan can't identify the volume, the file system itself is broken, or nothing else has found anything.
Why the partition scan doesn't invent partitions. Any few hundred bytes on a disk can accidentally resemble the start of a file system, so every candidate it finds is checked against the geometry it declares about itself — if the numbers don't add up internally, the candidate is discarded. Boot sector backups are rejected too: a backup is a byte-for-byte copy of a volume that is already on the disk, not a second volume. Everything left in the results is something you can actually open.
What you can recover
Deleted files
Files removed from a healthy volume, with their original names and folder structure intact.
Deleted & lost partitions
Partition entries erased from the table, plus logical drives inside an extended partition.
Formatted volumes
Contents of a volume that has been reformatted, provided the old data hasn't been overwritten.
Damaged file systems
Volumes that no longer mount, report the wrong size, or produce I/O errors when opened.
Files with no directory entry
Carved by content signature and measured to their real end, so they come back whole.
Files on failing hardware
Read with retry and timeout handling, so a bad sector doesn't abort the whole job.
Technical detail
If you want to know what's underneath.
| Area | Support |
|---|---|
| File systems | FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS |
| Partition schemes | MBR, GPT, extended partitions with logical drives |
| Sector size | 512-byte and 4096-byte native (4Kn) |
| Sources | Internal drives, USB enclosures and bridges, memory cards, disk images |
| Disk images | Create and work from a byte-for-byte image; recovering from an image is always safer than from the drive |
| Health | SMART attribute reading, including through USB bridge chips |
| Windows | Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11 and equivalent Server releases, 32- and 64-bit |
| Administrator rights | Required — raw device access needs elevation |
Why "not trusting the boot sector" matters
A volume's boot sector is a single sector. Overwrite it and the operating system has no idea the file system exists — but every file and directory record is still sitting on the disk, untouched. Tools that read their geometry from the boot sector have nothing to work with at that point. We derive the same parameters from the evidence instead.
Why file carving needs format knowledge
To carve a file you must know when it ends. A generic scanner can only look for the next signature and cut there, which truncates or merges files. Knowing a format's internal structure — its block chain, its length fields, its end marker — is what makes the difference between a file that opens and one that doesn't.
What we can't do
Every recovery vendor should tell you this. We'd rather set expectations than take your money twice.
Overwritten data cannot be recovered. By anyone. If new data has been written over the blocks your files occupied, those files are gone permanently.
TRIM on SSDs erases deleted data in the background. If your SSD has been powered on since the loss, recovery may already be impossible. Power it off as soon as you notice.
No software can fix a dead drive. If the disk won't spin up, isn't detected at all, or makes unusual noises, stop immediately and contact a professional cleanroom service. Software cannot help, and further attempts can make a mechanical failure worse.
Encrypted volumes stay encrypted. We can recover the files if you can supply the key or password; the encryption itself is not bypassed.
Try it on your own disk
Scanning and previewing cost nothing and never touch your data. Download it and see what's there.
Download for Windows