• Simple volume recovery mode:
  recover data from simple volumes or functional RAID arrays; recover data from volumes that are corrupt, accidentally formatted, virus damaged, deleted or otherwise damaged.
• RAID recovery recovery mode:
  reconstruct a RAID layout, then recover data; iRecover reconstructs defunct RAID 0 and RAID 5 arrays and then scans the drive(s) for lost data. RAID 5 can be reconstructed even if a member is missing. Please note that iRecover does not repair broken RAID setups; reconstructing means that iRecover determines the RAID parameters automatically and uses that data to copy the files to safety. 
• Digital image recovery mode:
  Use this mode to recover your precious photos from corrupted or damaged memory cards.

Digital Image recovery

'Digital image recovery' mode is specifically tailored to recover photographs. Pictures are usually stored on a removable memory device in the camera, such as memory cards or memory sticks.

Setting up the hardware

You need to set up the system in such a way that your memory card is accessible as a disk drive. A setup involving an appropriate card reader device is good for most situations. If you do not have a card reader, or cannot use it for some reason (e.g. the camera is using internal non-removable memory), you should try using the camera itself to access the memory card. Most cameras, when connected to a PC, allow access to the photos by assigning a drive letter to the storage device in the camera.

The procedure

Start iRecover and select 'Image Recovery'.

Select the device you wish to analyze, typically a camera memory card or the camera itself (as in this example). If the device contains a volume, you can select that volume, as is illustrated here. If no volume exists (most likely because of damage or corruption) select the device itself.

The device will be analyzed. No user input is required during this phase.
iRecover displays a simple disk map to show the progress of the analysis.

Because files are detected by looking at the internal file structure, file names can not be recovered. This is not a problem since most cameras use a numbering format for file names anyway. When the analysis is complete, the best thing for you to do is to simply select all the files, recover them, and sort them out later. It is possible though to preview the pictures by selecting 'Preview image files', this might help you determine which files to recover.

Now save the files by selecting them and copying them to a safe place.