Topic: Detecting wrong file type. Detecting corrupt file.

In short this is what the problem is:

A hard disk lost a great deal of its data. Trying to recover it, revealed that there was no file structure left for that data. I wasn't able to rebuild the file tree, so i did a thorough surface scan for files, instructing the software i'm using to only recover the files that were still uncorrupted.
Of course this is not very effective, as it does not let me see beforehand if the files i'm recovering are of any interest, and has left me with lots of directories filed with undated files named, for example, file00001.zip to file005501.zip, and the same for other file types.

Even though i'm only trying to undelete uncorrupted files, along with these came a lot of duplicate files, corrupt files and files with wrong file type extension.

The duplicates, i took care of.

Now i need a way of detecting wrong file type extension (as in .jpg instead of .zip, for example), or detecting if a file, for example a .zip, is a corrupt .zip, without having to open every single file.

I want to know if anyone knows of software (freeware preferably), that recognizes file type signatures, and checks for mismatch or corruption.

Irfan View, for example, partially does this but i don't think it's automatizable.

Thanks in advanced,
Sarah

~this is not a signature~

(Edited by Arthemis on 06-24-2006 16:24)

Like this one you mean? http://www.download.com/TrID/3000-2248_4-10442460.html?tag=lst-0-1

[ot]Sarah.. such a lovely name[/ot]

Thank you Ini. This and a few other proggies showed up on my google search, but i used this one as it is updated frequently, and i liked the way it is designed to identify file types. It's a pity it doesn't work recursively, but it really helped me out figure which files were which and which were heavily corrupted.

Still a lot to do, tho. :/

There would be ways to script some stuff for your problem. Glad I could help, sad I couldn't do more,
look for file type archives on google: batch scripting languages like python, php or activeperl could do the job, and there probably are a few available
scripts for the purpose.