Foremost

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Foremost is a console program to recover files based on their headers, footers, and internal data structures. This process is commonly referred to as data carving. Foremost can work on image files, such as those generated by dd, Safeback, Encase, etc, or directly on a drive. The headers and footers can be specified by a configuration file or you can use command line switches to specify built-in file types. These built-in types look at the data structures of a given file format allowing for a more reliable and faster recovery.

Installation

Install the foremost package.

Configuration

In most cases, it is not necessary to configure Foremost, since in default operation, it already recognizes most of the usual file types. Nevertheless, one could add additional file headers for detection, e.g. adding entries or uncomment examples: 

/etc/foremost.conf
#	wma     y       8000000  \x30\x26\xB2\x75    \x00\x00\x00\xFF
#
#	wma     y       8000000  \x30\x26\xB2\x75    \x52\x9A\x12\x46
#
	mp3     y    	8000000 \xFF\xFB??\x44\x00\x00
	mp3     y    	8000000 \x57\x41\x56\45            \x00\x00\xFF\
	mp3     y    	8000000 \xFF\xFB\xD0\            \xD1\x35\x51\xCC\
	mp3     y    	8000000 \x49\x44\x33\
	mp3     y    	8000000 \x4C\x41\x4D\x45\

Usage

Note: Instead on working directly on the hard disc which should be recovered, consider creating a backup image, for example using dd_rescue and use this with Foremost.

Run following command with image or device path as parameter and additional path to an output directory: 

# foremost -t all -i /path/to/image -o outputdir

The parameter -t all tries to recover all known file types.

See also