Active@ Partition Recovery 26.0.2.1

Active@ Partition Recovery is a Windows toolkit for finding deleted or damaged partitions and restoring access to their contents. It can restore partition information on the original disk, copy volume data elsewhere or extract files by their signatures.

Finding partitions on disks and images

QuickScan and SuperScan

QuickScan searches unallocated space for recently deleted partitions. You can select one area or scan unallocated areas across attached devices. Candidates appear in the device tree, where you can browse folders and preview their files before recovery.

SuperScan examines disk sectors for boot records and remaining filesystem structures. It searches for partitions that have been reformatted or that QuickScan cannot find. You can restrict its search to selected sector ranges and filesystem types.

Results can be filtered by volume size, filesystem and integrity status. Several candidates may represent different possible boundaries for the same lost volume. Browsing their folder contents helps distinguish the partition you need among those alternatives.

Found volumes can be examined while SuperScan continues. You can pause scanning, save its results and resume the session later against the same source disk. This preserves completed analysis when a lengthy scan has to be interrupted.

Storage devices and file systems

Active@ Partition Recovery works with internal hard drives and SSDs, NVMe storage, external USB disks, flash drives and memory cards. It recognizes filesystems created by other operating systems, allowing the Windows application to examine their partitions.

Supported filesystems include NTFS, ReFS, FAT and exFAT, plus Apple HFS+ and APFS. Linux and Unix formats include Ext, BtrFS, XFS, JFS and UFS.

Disk images

Disk images provide another source for analysis. Active@ Partition Recovery can create a mirror of a logical drive or physical device on separate storage. Its own format uses a DIM configuration file and RAW or compressed RAW data chunks.

It also opens third-party RAW images, split RAW images, VMware VMDK files and VirtualPC VHD files. The opening controls let you confirm sector size and arrange component chunks. An opened image appears as a device in the workspace.

You can run SuperScan against that image and inspect its detected volumes. Their files can then be recovered to another location.

Restoring partition and boot structures

Recover Volume in-Place restores partition information and checks boot sectors on the original disk. You can assign a drive letter and choose automatic repair or manual inspection. A usable filesystem lets Windows expose the restored volume's existing files.

An overlapping partition-table entry blocks this operation. Delete Invalid Partition removes an invalid entry without deleting its underlying file sectors. Restoring partition information cannot reconstruct overwritten contents; damaged filesystem structures may leave the restored volume inaccessible.

Manual boot-sector repair compares the primary sector, its backup and a generated template. You can copy a valid sector over its damaged counterpart or use the template. Matching valid sectors can be left unchanged during recovery.

Partitioning backups store structures such as the MBR, GPT records, partition tables and volume boot sectors. Repair and recovery commands record their previous structural information. Selecting a restore point reverses the application's partitioning changes rather than restoring file contents.

Copying volume data and extracting files in Active@ Partition Recovery

Professional and Ultimate include Copy All Data to a New Disk. Its Recover Files & Folders mode copies the accessible folder tree and file attributes. The output is an ordinary file collection without filesystem metadata or deleted data.

Copy All Volume Data instead copies sectors marked as occupied in the volume's allocation bitmap. It includes structures such as NTFS file records or FAT tables. That retained material can support further recovery work on the copied volume.

Damaged structures are copied too, so the destination may retain the source's access problems. Both modes format a separate destination disk before copying. Its existing contents are removed, and it needs enough space for the selected source data.

Disks containing the currently running operating system are excluded from the destination list.

Last Chance and File Organizer

Last Chance extracts files by recognizable signatures when partition structures cannot be reconstructed. You select disks and file types, preview results and recover individual files or groups. Supported categories include music, photos, camera RAW images, eBooks and Office documents.

Signature recovery targets unfragmented contents and groups output by extension under generated names. Original filenames and directory paths are unavailable when their filesystem records are missing. The File Organizer instead groups recovered files using their embedded information.

For music, that can produce folders organized by artist and album. Photographs can be grouped by camera and capture date. Those arrangements depend on attributes present inside the files, rather than their missing original directory paths.

Freeware and paid editions

Ultimate's Windows PE and Linux environments provide recovery access on computers that cannot start their normal operating system.