AI-Agent reconstruction for heavily fragmented MOV files (beyond standard recovery tools)
Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2026 2:10 pm
Hello everyone,
I’m working on a challenging data recovery case and wanted to share my findings and get feedback from the community.
I had a 4TB exFAT drive containing Sony 10-bit MOV video files that were heavily fragmented. I attempted recovery using several professional tools, including R-Studio, UFS Explorer, and others, but none of them were able to reconstruct the video files due to the fragmentation level.
After this, I started experimenting with my own built local Ai agent recovery approach as a technical exercise.
The idea is not traditional file carving, but a structure-aware reconstruction process focused on MOV container internals.
At a high level, the workflow:
This approach allowed me to recover a significant portion of the footage that standard recovery tools were unable to reconstruct.
I’m still testing and refining the method, especially around correctness validation and edge cases in highly fragmented media.
I wanted to ask:
Has anyone here experimented with atom-level reconstruction rather than traditional carving?
Are there known approaches in R-Studio or similar tools that handle MOV fragmentation at this level?
Any suggestions for improving structural validation in such cases?
I’m mainly looking to understand whether this is a known direction in professional recovery workflows or if there are existing techniques I should study.
Thanks in advance for any insights.
I’m working on a challenging data recovery case and wanted to share my findings and get feedback from the community.
I had a 4TB exFAT drive containing Sony 10-bit MOV video files that were heavily fragmented. I attempted recovery using several professional tools, including R-Studio, UFS Explorer, and others, but none of them were able to reconstruct the video files due to the fragmentation level.
After this, I started experimenting with my own built local Ai agent recovery approach as a technical exercise.
The idea is not traditional file carving, but a structure-aware reconstruction process focused on MOV container internals.
At a high level, the workflow:
- Sector-level scanning of the drive with persistent mapping
Detection of MOV/MP4 structural patterns
Identification of container atoms (moov, mdat, etc.)
Validation of fragmented atoms before reconstruction
Reassembly of video streams based on structural consistency
Iterative verification of reconstructed outputs
This approach allowed me to recover a significant portion of the footage that standard recovery tools were unable to reconstruct.
I’m still testing and refining the method, especially around correctness validation and edge cases in highly fragmented media.
I wanted to ask:
Has anyone here experimented with atom-level reconstruction rather than traditional carving?
Are there known approaches in R-Studio or similar tools that handle MOV fragmentation at this level?
Any suggestions for improving structural validation in such cases?
I’m mainly looking to understand whether this is a known direction in professional recovery workflows or if there are existing techniques I should study.
Thanks in advance for any insights.