Identifying the format of data

[noisecode]

I know this may not be the correct forum for this post, but it's the closest I could find. If anyone has a suggestion as to where this may be more appropriate I would be glad to hear it.

Anyway, my question is in regards to identifying the format of data. Say I had some arbitrary data, in my case raw data read directly from a pcmcia ATA flash card. What would be the best way to identify what exactly is going on, on the card? Is there any software that can fingerprint data? I would be interested to know if the flash card contains a filesystem, database, or was just used for a raw dump.

If anyone has any idea what I'm talking about or how to go about this, please reply. Thank you!

 

[michigan]

Few suggestions to look at:

To inspect/recover data on flash cards (and others) there is a program called "PC Inspector Smart Recovery." With the ability to recover, it may show what you're looking for.

Another program that might help is:

http://www.panterasoft.com/file-recovery/screenshots.html

Good Luck. Hope this helps.

 

[eyec]

understanding the file header data for known files would help identify what is on the card.

sometimes a binary/hex editor is the only way to id data formats.

 

[noisecode]

I have dumped the data on the ATA flash card to a file and inspected it with a HEX editor, but there is nothing I can actually read in the file that is pointing me in any particular direction.

 

[eyec]

what characters and offset show in the first line of the file?

what do you get when you do a directory?

if you really want to capture/recover the data you might possibly look at the products from Paraben

http://www.paraben.com