Carving is the practice of searching an input for files or other
kinds of objects based on content, rather than on metadata. File
carving is a powerful tool for recovering files and fragments of
files when directory entries are corrupt or missing, as may be
the case with old files that have been deleted or when
performing an analysis on damaged media. Memory carving is a
useful tool for analyzing physical and virtual memory dumps when
the memory structures are unknown or have been overwritten. Most
file carvers operate by looking for file headers and/or footers,
and then "carving out" the blocks between these two boundaries.
Semantic Carving performs carving based on an analysis of the
contents of the proposed files. File carving should be done on a
disk image, rather than on the original disk. File carving tools
are listed on the Tools:Data_Recovery wiki page. Many carving
programs have an option to only look at or near sector
boundaries where headers are found. However, searching the
entire input can find f