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Unerase and raw recovery

Unerase software can find deleted files either by analyzing filesystem structure or by just searching the disk for specific file headers. The second approach to the data recovery is called raw recovery. This recovery technique allows to recover only files matching the following criteria:

  • files with a specific header (.gif, .tif, .jpeg and so on),
  • non-fragmented files.

This limits raw recovery to relatively small files because large files are often fragmented.

Unerase involving raw recovery can take a long time because it is needed to scan all the disk. Some unerase tools like ReclaiMe and Magic Unerase (mode Deep Analysis) along with normal unerase perform raw recovery as well which provides more complete data recovery.

There can be a situation when the filesystem no longer contains the information about some particular file, but the file content is still on the disk. The only way to find this file is to search the disk for the file header. That is why it is useful to do raw recovery if unerase fails.