Truncated Or Damaged Files

To truncate is to shorten by cutting off. In computer terms, when information is truncated, it is ended abruptly at a certain spot. For example, if a program truncates a field containing the value of pi (3.14159265...) at four decimal places, the field would show 3.1415 as an answer. This is different from rounding, which would result in the answer of 3.1416.

When a media source, such as a floppy disk, has a damaged sector or area of its surface, the data directly underneath the sector is also damaged.  When this happens the file affected is often corrupt and cannot be accessed or read by the program that originated the file.

After the data recovery process is completed the file that was directly beneath the damage may look similar to the picture in Diagram 1.  Actual data that is affected by the "tear" is not recoverable, but as you can see in the diagram, the front of the file and the back of the file still has data that doesn't fall within the damaged area.  These areas of the file are truncated. 

   DIAGRAM 1. (Damaged File)

File Repair

During our file repair process we attempt to isolate the front and back of the file and rejoin them as displayed in Diagram 2.

                  DIAGRAM 2. (Rejoined File)

Once the file has been rejoined then the file requires some minor clean up.  Diagram 3 demonstrates a repaired file.

                DIAGRAM 3. (Repaired File)

Actual Examples

Below we have attached an example of a Microsoft Word document that was truncated due to damaged media.  This particular document in original form is hundreds of pages in length.  After the repair process was completed the actual data that was irrecoverable was equal to approximately 7 paragraphs.

As any college student would tell you, retyping 7 paragraphs is certainly preferred to retyping a 40 page thesis.