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Questions tagged [data-recovery]

This tag is for questions about techniques for recovering lost data — e.g., from deleted files and/or damaged or corrupted digital media. Please review the tag wiki before posting a question. Do not explicitly ask for tools or other products; such questions are off-topic on Super User.

Data Recovery is the process in which data lost, deleted, or corrupted can be recovered.

There are a few general techniques and popular tools for data recovery.  Before asking a question, please review the frequently asked questions on the topic:

or check for other FAQs.  Here are some other questions that may be useful:

See also this link for other frequently referenced questions.

See also

Other potentially related tags include , , , , , , , , , , , , and (and, rarely, , , and ).

2338 questions
87
votes
9 answers

How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?

Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade? To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on the hard drive, like every 5 years or so. Is it…
Alex
  • 1,085
84
votes
10 answers

How to destroy a CD/DVD rom safely?

I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them. Breaking them is dangerous, pieces could fly fast and…
user165733
56
votes
9 answers

How do I recover lost/inaccessible data from my storage device?

What steps can I take to try to recover lost or inaccessible data from any storage device? Answers: This applies to any computer storage device, e.g. internal/external hard drives, USB sticks, flash memory. The most important thing is to STOP…
Tamara Wijsman
  • 57,881
51
votes
4 answers

How do I find out the file type without an extension?

After recovering my HDD, I ended up with a lot of files with no extension. Many of them are .bin files. Is there any way to find out what file format they actually are? Many of them have no information if I edit them with Notepad++ or Hex Editors.
echolab
  • 735
50
votes
3 answers

Why does my SSD internally encrypt data, even without a password set?

Recently I had an SSD fail and am attempting to do a data recovery. The data recovery company tells us that it is complicated because the build-in drive controller uses encryption. I presume this to mean that when it writes data to the memory chips…
Tyler Durden
  • 6,333
49
votes
4 answers

USB flash drive not working or is appearing as an empty disk drive, Disk Management reports "No Media" with 0 bytes size

I have a USB flash drive which is no longer recognized by my computer. Windows Disk Management and DiskPart report No Media with no storage space (0 bytes) on the drive and I cannot partition or format the drive: Source If the drive appears in…
bwDraco
  • 46,683
46
votes
2 answers

How to recover data from microSD card that cannot be read?

I am trying to help a friend who is very concerned that she has just lost all of the data on her 32GB SanDisk microSD card. I told her I would post this and see if anyone could offer help. Here are the details: The SanDisk microSD card is less than…
Amazon Dies In Darkness
  • 9,990
43
votes
11 answers

Running chkdsk on a disk partition without a drive letter

I have a hard drive that shows up in Disk Management as having two partitions. One of the partitions says 69.71GB and that's it. The other says 4.82GB and, underneath that, Healthy (OEM Partition). I'm trying to do chkdsk on the 69.71GB partition…
neubert
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  • 156
37
votes
9 answers

How can I read a reel-to-reel tape from the 1970s?

A close friend of my mother worked at DEC in the 1970s and 1980s. She recently passed away, and in sorting through her estate, my mother discovered some reel-to-reel magnetic tape. We are curious about what might be on it. I haven't yet seen a…
user35138
36
votes
2 answers

Where to find clipboard history Ubuntu 14.04

I have deleted something but I had copied before. Ctrl+v shows only the last copied text. I tried to install diodon and cliplt. As I understand they start to archive some history of the clipboard. But how can I go to some history of the clipboard…
Martin
  • 361
35
votes
2 answers

Automatically 'brute force' a few bytes to recover a corrupt file

Does anyone out there know of a way to brute force values at a particular offset in a file? It's 4 consecutive bytes which would need to be brute forced. I know the correct SHA-1 of the corrupt file. So, what I'd like to do is compare the complete…
Sbt19
  • 341
32
votes
4 answers

Why erase file with random patterns instead of all 0's or 1's?

Computer files aren't actually removed when they are deleted on Windows. The address pointer is simply released and that space freed for overwrite later. For sensitive information, it is recommended that you erase it with a scrubber that obscures…
CSharperWithJava
  • 683
31
votes
2 answers

How many passes do you need to wipe/shred your files to make them not undeletable?

If you have a private data on a recent, normal hard drive - how many passes do you need to delete the data to make it unrecoverable? Not in the sense, that a forensic team of 20 experts with a budget of 100 million euro or dollars and 10 years of…
user unknown
  • 1,872
31
votes
5 answers

What actually is "unallocated space"?

Once again, here I am trying to wrap my head around some HDD and filesystem concepts. When Windows displays a drive as having "unallocated space" and prompts for the drive to be initialised, what exactly does this mean - that the drive has no…
Hashim Aziz
  • 13,835
30
votes
3 answers

Recovering unsaved Word changes prior to Unauthorized Windows 10 update

Windows 10 just updated without my permission. It asked earlier today, and I said NO. I came back from a short walk just now and Windows was in the middle of an update. Microsoft Word came up at boot, but none of my 3 previously opened documents…
user905474
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