Recovering Data from USB

This post continues series of articles about the internal mechanisms of today’s data recovery tools.

In “How Data Recovery Works”, we looked at how file recovery tools can recover deleted files by using the file system. But what if the file was deleted a long time ago, and its file system record no longer exists? Or what if the disk was formatted or repartitioned and the file system is empty or missing? Finally, what if the file system is overwritten by another file system (such as that used by Linux or Ubuntu if you experimented with an alternative OS)? If this is the case, traditional file recovery tools will fail to recover anything.

It is well known that in case of any destruction of the logical disk file system structure, the operating system and all programs accustomed to clear and slim structuring begin to experience difficulties in determining the file system type. In such cases, the RAW file system occurs.

In this article, we will discuss the main causes of RAW file system, as well as methods of its fixing.