recover

recover device

device
    Specifies the device (e.g., /dev/sda1) or file containing the damaged file system to be analyzed. The device needs to be a raw partition or image of one. Usage without specification can lead to undefined behaviour.

The recover command is a utility designed to attempt the recovery of data from damaged or corrupted file systems and partitions. It works by scanning the disk or partition, identifying potentially recoverable files based on file headers and signatures, and then attempting to extract and save those files to a safe location.

recover is often used when traditional file system repair tools like fsck fail or are unable to fully restore a file system to a usable state. It's a tool of last resort, primarily employed in cases of accidental deletion, hardware failure, or file system corruption.

It is important to understand that recover is not guaranteed to recover all lost data, and the recovered files may be incomplete or corrupted. The success of recovery depends on the extent of the damage and whether the data has been overwritten. In this respect it works similar to other well known recovery programs like PhotoRec.

recover can be destructive if not used carefully. It's highly recommended to create a full disk image of the damaged device before attempting any recovery operations. Recovered files may be fragmented, incomplete, or corrupted. Always verify the integrity of recovered data.

By default the command does not give a visual representation of its progress.
It creates a set of folders where the data is grouped by the type of recovered content. The amount of recovered content might be big depending on the damage and the command will run for a long period of time.

The recover command has been available in various forms since the early days of Linux, often as part of data recovery toolkits. It represents one approach to salvage data that is presumed 'lost'.

dd(1), fsck(8), photorec(1)