Save data to the same drive

No new data should be written to the problem drive to avoid permanently writing over the lost files. File Scavenger® has a safety check to prevent saving recovered files to the same drive being scanned.

If you are recovering files from the only drive on the computer, you will need a new drive letter by mapping a network shared folder or installing a new disk such as an external USB drive or another storage device such as a USB flash card. Generally recovered data cannot be saved to CD or DVD drives because they require a staging folder on drive C:.

However, if you are willing to take the risk of losing some or all of the lost data permanently (with no chance of recovery), you can override this safety check. The risk depends on the size of the files and the amount of free disk space. For example, if the disk has 40 GB of free space and 2 MB of data is being saved, the risk is very low. But if you are saving 1 GB of data over 2 GB of free space, it is almost certain that much of the lost data will be overwritten, resulting in corrupted recovered files. Type Yes in the Overriding code textbox to override the safety check.