The Device List

All the devices found are displayed in the Device list (you need to be an administrator of the computer to see all the devices). ReclaiMe uses specific icon for each device type:

- for a typical hard drive,
- for a device connected via USB, FireWire, or eSATA
- for a complex volume or a RAID array,
- for a disk image file.

Note that when searching for the available devices, ReclaiMe File Recovery gathers a device self-diagnostics information as well. The program selects the color of the icon for a particular device according to the self-diagnostics data. Gray color means that a device is in good condition which corresponds to a normal (working) state; red icon color indicates that a hard drive (or one of the drives in a complex volume) is faulty.

The devices are grouped into the sections on the screen:

  • Disk images,
  • Logical drives,
  • USB devices - the devices connected to the computer via USB. These devices typically include the memory cards connected through the devices (cameras, mobile phones, MP3-players, PDAs) or through the card reader, thumbdrives, and external drives in USB enclosure,
  • Physical devices.

What information about the device ReclaiMe can give you:

  • Model name - for the logical and physical drives.
  • Size - for the logical and physical drives.
  • Volume label - for the volumes (logical disks) if such a label exists.
  • Filesystem type - is displayed for all the devices if ReclaiMe File Recovery was able to determine the filesystem type (read more about filesystem types).
  • Connection type ("USB" for USB devices).
  • Whether the drive is healthy or not - for all the devices according to the color of the corresponding icon.

The double click on the drive starts the analysis (has the same effect if you selected the drive and then clicked the Start button).

Device selection tips

Sometimes it is difficult to identify your device in the device list of ReclaiMe File Recovery software. Tips for the most common cases are provided below.

Several partitions located on a single physical drive

ReclaiMe File Recovery recovers data of one filesystem at a time. If there are several partitions on a single hard drive, recovering all the data off the hard drive requires a separate pass for each filesystem on the hard drive. Running the software against an entire physical hard drive with multiple partitions will not work - recovered data will be incomplete.

Drives from a NAS

Modern NASes typically use MD-RAID or LVM (Logical Volume Management) to organize data on the drives. ReclaiMe will automatically look for MD-RAID and LVM records when started. With a set of drives from a NAS, you should connect all the drives at the same time, start ReclaiMe, and let it finish Looking for Linux MD volumes and Looking for Linux LVM volumes. Then, first look at the largest LVM volume; if there are no LVM volumes listed, look at the largest MD RAID volume. Normally, LVM volume, if available, takes precedence.

RAID 5 volume

In case of a RAID 5 volume, consider the following:

  • RAID 5, 1 disk missing is recoverable;
  • RAID 5 with two or more disks missing is unrecoverable until you provide the missing disks. Sometimes, disks have to be repaired in a data recovery lab.

RAID 1 volume

If you see a RAID 1 volume of small capacity (much smaller than the expected storage capacity), it is likely the service partition of the NAS, storing NAS firmware. You should ignore it because it doesn't contain user data.

Your device is not listed

If you do not see the needed device in the device list of ReclaiMe File Recovery, open Disk Management and check whether your device is listed in there and with what size.

  • If Windows doesn't see your device and it is not listed in Disk Management. Until you eliminate the problems hindering detection of the device by Windows (connection issue, enclosure issue if you deal with an external device, or other problems), ReclaiMe File Recovery cannot access the drive.
  • Windows sees the device, but the device capacity is zero. In this case you cannot recover data from it using data recovery software. Consider contacting a data recovery lab.

Tip: To open Disk Management, press Windows key + R on the keyboard, type diskmgmt.msc, and click OK.

You need to unformat a drive

If you need to unformat a hard drive was accidentally formatted. Even if the drive was formatted to another filesystem, select the drive letter which is currently assigned to the formatted drive. ReclaiMe File Recovery is designed to identify the filesystem automatically during the recovery rather than rely on the partition table data. If the data belonging to the old partition is still on the hard drive, ReclaiMe File Recovery will get data back.

Still have questions?