File Carving, Data Carving, or just Carving is a general term for extracting data (files) out of raw data, much like "carving" a sculpture from a stone.
It is the practice of searching for files based on internal content, rather than known information such as that supplied by a file system. File carving is a powerful tool for recovering files and fragments of files when a file system is not present, damaged, corrupt, or unknown.
File Carving works by looking for file headers and footers, and then "carving out" the blocks between these two boundaries. Additional accuracy is achieved by analysis of the contents of identified files to assess if internal structure conforms with the identified file type.
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