Table of Contents >> Section III: Using File Scavenger

Chapter 5: Installing File Scavenger®

The risk of direct installation

If the subject drive is a system drive, downloading and installing File Scavenger ® on the subject computer will reduce your chances of a successful recovery. This section will quantify the risk.

If the subject drive is a data drive, direct installation is safe (as long as the installation folder is not on the subject drive) and this discussion does not apply.

A drive (usually referred to by a letter such as C, D, etc.) is the basic unit of storage with real physical boundaries. A folder is a logical container of files with little significance with regard to file recovery. All files and folders on a drive share the same pool of storage allocation units.

When a file is deleted, its “file slot” is marked as unused, but the file ’s contents are not immediately destroyed. The file can be recovered until the slot is reallocated to a new file (or the expansion of an existing file). Any action that creates new data on the subject drive, therefore, can potentially overwrite a lost file permanently.

Depending on the pattern of use on a drive, the number of unused slots varies from a few to several thousand or even more. A newly-formatted drive starts out with very few unused slots. Over time, the number usually increases. A typical drive may have several thousand unused slots. 

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