Volume or Partition Affiliation

(To avoid repetition, "volume" here means "partition or volume". Technically, the terms are used for basic and dynamic disks, respectively.)

The Volume column displays what File Scavenger® determines to be the volume a file belongs to. The assigned drive letter is displayed if available. If the volume is inactive and has no drive letter, a sequential number will be displayed, which indicates the order it was detected by File Scavenger and has no other meaning.

Correct volume affiliation is necessary for successful file recovery. Files affiliated with the wrong volume in general will not be recovered successfully, with the following exceptions:

• Very small files (a few hundred bytes in size) on an NTFS volume.
• Files detected by their data pattern signature and displayed with a sequential "Unknown" filename, such as "Unknown000001.jpg".

Sometimes File Scavenger® cannot determine unambiguously which volume a file belongs to, such as when overlapping defunct volumes are detected. In some other cases, a file is deemed to not belong to any volume, such as when the volume structure has been completely lost. Such files are displayed under the Unknown Volume and the Volume column is left blank.

Attempts to save recovered files not affiliated with any volume will result in the error "File does not belong to any volume". Files with ambiguous volume affiliation are saved redundantly with a number suffix such as (1), (2), etc. appended after the filename. Only the copy from the correct volume holds the correct contents, provided that the data has not been overwritten.

Use this dialog to override the default volume affiliation.

Let File Scavenger determine volume affiliation.

This option should be selected in almost all cases. Expert users under special situations can use one of the options discussed next.

Affiliate all selected files with:

All files selected for recovery are to be affiliated with the volume displayed in the drop-down list box. Only files that truly belong to this volume will be saved with the correct contents.

Override volume size:

A volume may be erroneously detected with a smaller size than the original size. Legitimate files located outside of the incorrect size will not be saved correctly. Using this option, you can reinstate the original size.

If it is not known, you can specify the maximum possible size. However, you may also save files that lie beyond the end of the volume and do not actually belong to it.

Overriding size:

Specify the correct size.

Maximum possible value:

The number of remaining sectors from the beginning of the volume.

Affiliate all selected files with the user-specified volume below: (Expert users only)

Use this option in case the volume is not detected and you know its exact sector location and size. This option should only be used by experts.

First sector:

The disk sector number of the first sector of the volume. This value must be exact for recovery to work. If the value is off even by a single sector, recovered files will be gibberish. For ease of reference, the number of sectors is converted to offset in binary megabytes or gigabytes to the right of the textbox. A sector is typically 512 bytes; therefore there are 2,048 sectors per binary MB or 2,097,152 sectors per binary GB.

Note that this value is relative to the disk or volume being scanned. For example, if volume C: is being scanned, this is the offset from the beginning of C, which is not the beginning of the physical disk. On the other hand, if Disk 1 is being scanned, then this is the offset from the beginning of the physical disk.

Number of sectors:

Volume size in sectors. This value is also converted to binary megabytes or gigabytes to the right of the textbox.