File Recovery - Glossary

File
A file is a collection of data stored in one unit, under a filename. This can be a document, a picture, an audio or video file, a library, an application, or other collection of data.

File Extension
A file extension is nothing more than the last characters after the period in the name of a file. The extension defines the file "type", e.g. text file, executable file, database file or graphic file.

ADF
The Amiga disk file stores the contents of an entire Amiga floppy in a single file. It is binary, but is designed to work on any machine that has Amiga emulator software.

CDFS
The Compact Disk File System (CDFS) is based on the ISO 9660 Standard (but extends it to allow long and double-byte filenames). To applications, the CDFS file system appears similar to a FAT file system. Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000-XP, and subsequent versions support CDFS.

AVI
A video file will typically store a movie clip. It's generally supported by many different platforms, there are several different versions of AVI files in use.

UDF
The Universal Disk Format (UDF) is a format specification of a file system for storing files on optical media. It is an implementation of the ISO/IEC 13346 standard (also known as ECMA-167). It is considered to be a replacement of ISO 9660, and nowadays is widely used for (re) writable optical media. UDF is developed and maintained by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA).

BAT
A file with this extension is most likely a batch file for either CP/M or MS-DOS and is not likely to work on a different platform than the one for which it was originally written.

CGI
A common gateway interface file is a program designed to be run over the web.

EXE
An executable is a program for a CP/M, MS-DOS, MS-Windows, or possibly even an x86 GEOS machine.

GIF
A general image format file is a representation of an image or simple animation. It is currently the most widely accepted image format in existence.

HEX
This is a generic sort of extension indicating some sort of hexadecimal (or even binary) data.

JPG or JPEG
An image format optimized for "natural" images developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, JPEGs are probably second only to GIFs in level of acceptance.

MDB
A Microsoft database file is a binary file containing a database for use with Microsoft Access.

TTF
The Truetype Font format is used for storing vector fonts. It originated on Macintoshes and WinTel boxes and can be made to work on many other systems as well.

ZIP
A file that has been compressed with either the zip or pkzip program will get the "zip" extension. It is similar in portability and performance to gzip (with gzip being perhaps slightly more portable).