Does Recover My Files search by cluster or sector?

[jsstevenson]

Hello...

I am currently running a full search of a corrupted NTFS partition (approx 200GB partition!) and notice that the search information says:

Search Drive 1 - 58,235,256 of 398,294,975

What I am curious about is the second of the two values reported above, namely the value "398,294,975".

As I see it, the program is either searching each sector (512 bytes) or it is searching each cluster (also 512 bytes if based on value above). If it is searching each sector then I understand the above results. If however it is searching each cluster then I start to become unsure!

For example it could be that the drive is formatted with a 512 byte cluster size. The above values still make sense... but.... if it is an ntfs file system is it not likely that the cluster size would be 4096 bytes (8 sectors)? If the cluster size is 4096 bytes then the second figure quoted above should be "49,786,872" and not "398,294,975".

My conclusion would be one of the following:

1. Recover My Files recovers data by searching each sector as opposed to each cluster

1. Recover My Files recovers data by searching each cluster and believes that the cluster size in this situation is 512 bytes either due to the cluster size not being the default 4096 bytes for a large NTFS partition or because I have not adjusted the cluster size settings to 4096 bytes prior to running the program (assuming I can!)

If the program searches by cluster and the cluster size is actually 4096 bytes and not 512 bytes does this mean that the search, while more exhaustive, will take much longer because it thinks the cluster size is 512 bytes? Or again is it simply searching each sector regardless of cluster size?

Any comments, again, would be welcome.

Thanks
Jamie.

[GDH]

When you run a Format Recover on the physical drive Recover My Files defaults to a sector search.

[jsstevenson]

Straight forward!!! That clears it up.

Thanks for answering.
Jamie.