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Subject: Re: Recovering deleted Reunion file on Mac - File Type
Author: Tim Goddard
Date: Sunday, January 12, 2014
Classification: Query
Surnames:

Over a year down the track I doubt this is still useful to you, but might be to others who find your question like I did. Your file recovery software is unlikely to have found the family files as it won't recognise this file type. You need to run file recovery software configured to pick up _both_ these "magic" identifiers for Reunion 9 (unknown for others):

UDS3R~U9
3SDU9U~R

I assume that the former is generated on the old PowerPC macs and the latter on Intel macs. We have just successfully recovered a family file from a partial copy of a corrupted disk by finding the offset of "3SDU9U~R" in the file and grabbing a 10MB chunk starting with that.

My specific method and software is unlikely to be useful to others, but many file recovery tools could be configured using that. My general advice if you delete a file containing significant work (worth a couple $00 to get back), or if the computer containing it breaks is to:

1. Immediately stop using the computer. Any activity could overwrite the files.
2. Take the computer, and if available a backup of the files, to a data recovery company.
3. If you have a backed up copy, even an old one, they can find the identifier sequence from them.
4. For reunion files where you don't have a backup, magic identifiers are above.

Kind regards,

Tim
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