Exfat Recovery

[Rosicler Kleckner]

Howcan I restore the subdirectory "tree". (I know the data for the files will still be there, but that the data structure which points to the files specifying which folders they are in will have been erased? I think? I'm not 100% sure on how exfat data is formatted on a disk...)

So far I have tried testdisk. What I have done is a scan for deleted files and folders to a new log file on a local nas disk. Unfortunately this is taking an exceedingly long time, and I think testdisk will just dump all the files it finds into one folder... which is no good because I had many files with the same names in different subfolders on the external disk.

testdisk is amazing! - I accidentally selected "delete all" on my Fuji X-S10 camera instead of "delete one", which deleted 2 days worth of videos and photos (this is from a 128GB SD card formatted with exFAT).

ExFat deletes files by marking each file and directory entry with a symbol (0xe5 as the first byte), and also removing the pointer to the file entry so that the blocks are freed up. There is no second file table, so once it is done, it is not feasible to correct. AFAIK there is no other method to undelete a file with ExFat on linux.

Testdisk, which is used for partition and file system recovery, allows you to find files listed in the file system as deleted, with the caveat of those files hopefully not having been overwritten. In this case, you can "undelete" the files, which is copying the file starting at the innodes listed, with filename and other information intact.

This includes the folder hierarchy, sometimes. I just used it recover 1440 photos from a corrupt Canon Camera SD card formatted as ExFat. I could see the files on the camera, but not when I put the SD card in my Mac. Testdisk could see the corrupt/deleted folder, and I could recover the files with at least 2 levels of folder structure. This should be the same for you having used rm. Had there been an intermediate step of putting all those files in a trash or recycling bin, then it might not have your existing folder structure.

The other tool that comes with TestDisk is PhotoRec, which is a low level disk analyzer that searches for file structures, ignoring the file system. This is when you delete a partition or the file system is completely hosed. As the actual data do not have names, this is done by the File System or OS, all the files would be unnamed and without folder structure.

Now, what you need to do is be careful. When you restore a file, testdisk may write that file to the drive, potentially ruining the ability to restore other files. The solution is to have testdisk restore files TO a different drive than the drive that testdisk is restoring files FROM.

Unfortunately, I don't know of a simpler way to restore from exFAT, and I'm not sure if there is one. The ability to "UNDELETE" was popular around the times of DR-DOS 5 and MS-DOS (6, maybe 5). However, businesses have learned that the better approach is to have data properly backed up. So, there's been less interest in being able to UNDELETE. By the time exFAT rolled around, interest in undeleting has diminished. I suggest you consider yourself lucky that testdisk supports exFAT.

I don't think exFAT is very different from FAT32. I'm betting that FAT32 and FAT16 are decently supported by some open source tools. So, it wouldn't be too hard for someone to write a nice exFAT undeleter.

I have a 64 GB USB with exFAT (with 4096 byte Unit Allocation Size) file system. I have connected it to a Bus entertainment system which was running Android to listen my music within. It didn't see my USB and when I get home, I realized it was RAW.

You can try other software that supports exFAT data recovery to get back files. There are many recovery tools out there on the Internet, thus it's easy to get lost data back if you try sifferent tools. Here is one of those solutions you can try:

Step 4: Scan and preview files. The recovery software displays files it just finds out and keeps updating file list. When you see files you can start preview files and check file quality. You can easily open files by double click mouse button.

I unplugged my USB stick from Ubuntu 16.04 without the save remove option, but exfat should be fine doing so. No read write was happening, the partition does not use journaling. What I end up with is an unmountable USB stick with checksum error.

What tools are there to recover the partition table or at least the data on the USB stick? What I am doing now is scanning via parted. Has anyone experienced the same problem with exfat and recovery options? Unfortunately parted probably won't detect the partition because it does not support exfat.

The fact that the file system does not use journaling is the exact opposite of "being fine" removing a drive without unmounting it properly. ;) The OS can't easily fix inconsistencies because there is no such journal.

But this tool testdisk is without doubt most awesome. In the main menu I choose Advanced and proceeded, all files showed up and I copied them to the internal drive. Did I say this tool is awesome :).

MiniTool OEM program enable partners like hardware / software vendors and relative technical service providers to embed MiniTool software with their own products to add value to their products or services and expand their market.

In this MiniTool post, we will simply show you what is an exFAT file system and its benefits. Besides, if you delete or lose some important files from an exFAT drive, you can use the two tools mentioned in this article to get them back.

The full name of exFAT is Extensible File Allocation Table, which was introduced by Microsoft in 2006. It is one of the commonly-used file systems for flash memory like USB flash drives and SD cards. This file system is usually used when NTFS is not available but a greater file size limit than the standard FAT32 file system (i.e. 4 GB) is required. So, an exFAT drive is a drive that uses an exFAT file system.

Perhaps you have formatted your USB drive to exFAT and there are many important files in your exFAT drive. You can back up your USB drive for safe. Then, if a data loss issue happens, you can restore your missing files from the previous backup.

If so, you need to use third-party data recovery software to recover lost and deleted files from an exFAT drive. If you are using a Windows computer, you can try MiniTool Power Data Recovery, a free exFAT file recovery tool. If you are running macOS, you can use Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, a free Mac data recovery software.

This software has a trial edition and you can first try it to scan the exFAT drive you want to recover data from. If you can find the lost files from the scan results, you can upgrade this software to a full edition and then recover all your needed files without limits.

4. This software will show you all the drives it can detect. You need to select the target exFAT drive from the drive list under Logical Drive and then click the Scan button to start scanning the selected drive.

5. The entire scanning process will last for a while. But it should end within half an hour. You need to wait patiently until the whole process ends. When it ends, you can see the scan results that are listed by the path by default. You can open each path to find your needed files you want to recover.

7. If there are so many files in the scan results, it should be a little difficult to find your needed files. If so, you can switch to the Type tab to make the software show you the scan results by the type. You can also use the Find feature to locate your needed files by using the name.

8. If this software can help you find the files you want to recover, you can go to the MiniTool official site to select a suitable full edition and then use the license key you get to register the software directly in the scan result interface.

9. After the software register, you can select the files you want to recover and click the Save button to select a suitable location to save them. When choosing the destination drive, you should not select the original drive. Otherwise, the deleted files could be overwritten and become unrecoverable.

Additionally, this software also supports NTFS data recovery. If you have this requirement or you want to know exFAT vs NTFS data recovery, you can get useful information from this article: Tips For NTFS Data Recovery That Will Satisfy Your Needs.

This software is specially designed for Mac computers. With it, you can recover documents, photos, videos, audio, and more from different types of drives including SSDs, HDDs, memory cards, USB drives, pen drives, etc.

This software also has a trial edition. You can also use it to scan the exFAT drive and check whether it can find your needed files. You can go to the MiniTool download center to download and then install this software on your Mac.

3. You will see the Select What To Recover interface. Here, you can select the data types you want to recover. If you want to recover all kinds of files, you can just turn on the button for Recover Everything.

8. Likewise, the whole scanning process will last for some minutes. You should wait until it ends. Then, you can see the scan results that are listed by Classic List by default. You can open each folder to find your needed files. If you only want to recover the deleted files, you can switch to the Deleted List tab to check.

10. Since you are not allowed to use the trial edition of this software to recover files, you need to upgrade it to a full edition if you want to recover the files you need. You can also get a full edition from the MiniTool official site. After registering the software, you can select all your needed files at once and then click the Recover button to select a suitable drive to save these files. Likewise, the selected destination drive should not be the original drive to avoid data overwritten.

How to recover data from an exFAT drive in Windows and Mac? After reading this post, you should know the answers. You see it is quite easy to use third-party software to perform an exFAT file recovery. The two programs mentioned in this post are worth trying.

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