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I am looking for options regarding recovering deleted files (don't recall if corrupted applied).

Filesystem for the corrupted files are VFAT-formatted on a USB, though I run a Linux system (but can use Windows if necessary). The original files were created using Windows.

The corrupted files I have found (so far) are images from a scanner using "pictures" setting on the scanner to scan the images. Many images are not corrupted, but some are. Part of the image is present, but most of it is covered in a 'grey' color which looks like a piece of dark grey paper, but it is definitely not.

Jeff Schaller
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sgu55
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  • I can't tell you which post you meant, maybe @StephenKitt himself can, but PhotoRec should be the best choice for VFAT. Did you give it a try? – Philippos Sep 10 '19 at 11:30
  • @Philippos No, not yet. Was wondering how good it is for 'corrupted' files versus deleted files; my original question incorrectly stated deleted files. – sgu55 Sep 10 '19 at 11:32
  • While the tools recommended by @stephen-kit do their job, it is still advisable to make an image of the usb-device first, and let the tools work on a copy of that image. ddrescue can do the imaging for you. Never work on the original when recovering data. – markgraf Sep 10 '19 at 12:25
  • @markgraf Good idea, thanks. – sgu55 Sep 10 '19 at 12:34

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I suspect the comment you’re referring to is this one:

See PhotoRec, it fits your requirements and is available packaged in most Linux distributions. For more advanced recovery, see also Foremost.

These tools are file recovery tools, designed to retrieve deleted files; they won’t help you fix corrupted file contents. The corruption you’re describing sounds like typical JPEG bistream corruption, and you’d be better off looking for a bitstream recovery tool — I’m not aware of any such tools for Unix-style platforms other than macOS, but a web search finds a few tools for Windows or macOS (I’m not linking any because I haven’t tried any).

Stephen Kitt
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  • Yes, thank you! Those were the 2 reccs. I am glad you mentioned they won't help fix corruption as some articles, etc seem to mention they might. I also think the images are jpg, which I can check easily enough. Thanks again. – sgu55 Sep 10 '19 at 11:44