What recover means here
Recovering a file here means writing a new one from the data still present in the damaged file. Nothing is invented, so the result holds what arrived intact and may be shorter than the original.
Video
- MP4, MOV and 3GP: a lost index is rebuilt from the frames.
- MKV, WebM, AVI, WMV, ASF and FLV: reading picks up again after the damage.
- MPEG-TS, MPG, VOB and DV: damaged passages are cut out.
- Ogg Theora and RealMedia: supported, with fewer good results in our tests.
Audio
- MP3, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV, AC-3, MP2, AMR and AU.
- Ogg Vorbis, Opus, WMA and AIFF: supported, with fewer good results in our tests.
Archives
- ZIP, TAR, BZIP2 and ISO: files can often be found even when the start of the archive is lost.
- RAR 5, 7z, GZIP, XZ, ZSTD and TAR.GZ: the start has to be intact.
Each file inside an archive is then treated by its own format, so a damaged video in a damaged ZIP can come back playable.
Documents and data
- PDF, EPUB, plain text, CSV, JSON, XML, HTML, SQL dumps and SQLite.
- DOCX, XLSX and ODT: the start has to be intact.
- DOC, XLS, PPT and Parquet.
Images and fonts
- BMP and uncompressed TIFF, even without their header.
- JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, ICO and compressed TIFF: the start has to be intact.
- PSD, TrueType, OpenType and WOFF.
Disk images and programs
- QCOW2, VHD, VHDX, VMDK and partitioned disk images.
- ELF and Windows PE programs.
What cannot be recovered
Data that never arrived. Password-protected content. A file whose identifying structure sat only in the damaged part: there the tool says so and writes no broken file.
Common questions
My format is not on the list. Is it worth trying?
Yes. The engine recognises over 300 file signatures. Choose Inspect only: it says what it detected and writes no file.
Does the extension matter?
No. The format is read from the content, so a .crdownload, a .part and a file with no extension are treated alike.
Sources
Documents consulted for this guide.