Scan for missing volumes

ZAR has been discontinued

After about twenty years, I felt ZAR can no longer be updated to match the modern requirements, and I decided to retire it.

ZAR is replaced by Klennet Recovery, my new general-purpose DIY data recovery software.

If you are looking specifically for recovery of image files (like JPEG, CR2, and NEF), take a look at Klennet Carver, a separate video and photo recovery software.

When a partition is deleted from the partition table, or the partition chain gets corrupt, the partition becomes inaccessible. However, the corresponding boot sector may still remain intact. Partition recovery procedure looks through the volume locating such "orphan" boot sectors. Each of these boot sectors is analyzed, and the partitions that look reasonably valid are added to the partition view.

To perform a scan, select the desired physical disk and click the More Functions button. On the menu, select "Scan for missing partitions".

Be advised of the two limitations of the partition recovery process

Partition recovery might bring up a number of "phantom" volumes. This is because boot sectors are occasionally saved in the data area of the volume for maintenance reasons. For example, the AUTOCHK.EXE Windows NT file system checker contains several boot sector templates in its code. ZAR can not determine if the boot sector is genuine or represents a "phantom" volume, so everything gets shown for your review.
RAID or spanned volumes cannot be located this way, since volume boot sectors do not contain RAID layout information. The only exception are RAID1 "half-mirror" members. First member of the RAID or spanned volume (actually containing the boot sector) will typically be found and listed, but attempting the analysis run against the volume defined in such a way will fail.