In computing, recover is a primitive

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

error recovery utility included in MS-DOS / IBM PC DOS versions prior to DOS 6.0 and a number of other operating systems.

Overview

Typing recover at the DOS command-line invoked the program file or (depending on the DOS version). recover proceeded under the assumption that all

directory Directory may refer to: * Directory (computing), or folder, a file system structure in which to store computer files * Directory (OpenVMS command) * Directory service, a software application for organizing information about a computer network's u ...

information included on a disk or disk partition was hopelessly corrupted, but that the FAT and non-directory areas might still contain useful information (though there might be additional bad disk sectors not recorded in the FAT). The program removed all subdirectories and all entries in the

root directory In a computer file system, and primarily used in the Unix and Unix-like operating systems, the root directory is the first or top-most directory in a hierarchy. It can be likened to the trunk of a tree, as the starting point where all branches ...

, and then created new files with names such as "" in the root directory, corresponding to the valid allocation chains that were found in the FAT area (excluding disk clusters that were tested and found to have hardware errors). A formerly

bootable disk A boot disk is a removable digital data storage medium from which a computer can load and run (boot) an operating system or utility program. The computer must have a built-in program which will load and execute a program from a boot disk meeting ...

would no longer be bootable after recover had executed. The range of circumstances in which recover was genuinely useful was quite limited, and well-meaning DOS users sometimes created havoc by running recover under the misconception that it was a file

undelete Undeletion is a feature for restoring computer files which have been removed from a file system by file deletion. Deleted data can be recovered on many file systems, but not all file systems provide an undeletion feature. Recovering data witho ...

utility. In DOS version 5, another mode of operation was added: specifying a single

filename A filename or file name is a name used to uniquely identify a computer file in a directory structure. Different file systems impose different restrictions on filename lengths. A filename may (depending on the file system) include: * name &ndas ...

on the command line would cause the program to test all the disk sectors used to store the file, and shorten the file by omitting sectors which tested bad. DR DOS 6.0 includes an implementation of the command.DR DOS 6.0 User Guide Optimisation and Configuration Tips
/ref> The command is also available on SISNE plus and IBM OS/2. The FreeDOS version was developed by Imre Leber and is licensed under the GPL.

References

External links

recover , Microsoft DocsOpen source RECOVER implementation that comes with MS-DOS v2.0
{{Windows commands Disk file systems External DOS commands IBM PC compatibles Microsoft free software OS/2 commands

Overview

See also

References

Further reading

External links