LOST.DIR Demo

Lost Data? Suddenly, LOST.DIR contains lots of files? It had been empty all the time! These files have no extensions, and numbers as names? And there's no program which opens them?

This demo version shows how many files (and which file types) in LOST.DIR can be restored.

Please note: "Restore" means to append extensions, according to the file type. The original file names cannot be restored!

IMPORTANT

This app was made for Android < 5. The following steps should work for any Android version:

1. In the directory "Android/data" on your external SD Card, create the folder "hdop.lost_dir".

2. Move the LOST.DIR folder into the new directory "Android/data/hdop.lost_dir". This should be possible with the file manager (My Files). If not, use a PC.

3. Start this app, tap on the screen and navigate to "Android/data/hdop.lost_dir/LOST.DIR" on your external SD Card.

How it works? Faulty file operations cause Android to try its best to save what can be saved: Blocks of data, which can no longer be assigned to the filesystem structure are not deleted, but saved in LOST.DIR, with numbers as file names.

IF YOU'RE LUCKY, these are complete (or truncated) files, whose types can be identified using the "magic number" contained in the first few bytes. After renaming an identified file - with the appropriate extension - it can be opened with the associated program.

So, these files can - at least partially - be restored. A restored file may even happen to be larger than the original file was, because the "files" in LOST.DIR always contain complete sectors. But most programs ignore "garbage" after end of file. Anyway, if no other backup is available, this is better than nothing...

This app automates the procedure described above. All files without extension are analyzed and - if identified - renamed accordingly.

File types:

7z, aif, avi, bmp, bz2, doc, epub, exe, flac, flv, gif, gz, html, jpg, m4a, mid, mkv, mod, mov, mp3, mp4, ogg, pdf, png, ps, rar, rm, swf, tif, txt, wav, xml, zip

Note: The restored files may be incomplete, damaged, or in any other way unusable.

(More keywords: Data recovery, pictures and videos disappeared, recover lost files)