This is a collection of file(s) I use in conjuction with data recovery tools such as GNU ddrescue and testdisk.
I personally have this as just datasort in my /usr/bin so that it is available anywhere. It's mostly meant for sorting the output of photorec into more useful locations. Basically, it walks through the base directory you provide and tries to guess the filetype based on the extension. Then it puts a directory for each extension into target, and creates a directory target/unsorted for files that it can't figure out. Then it walks through the base again; this time copying (never deleteing) files into the appropriate subdirectory of target.
datasort [-option] /path/to/base /path/to/target
Note that flags should be compounded, i.e. -tb instead of -t -b. This has to do with how datasort interprets input.
-e Target file 'e'xists; do not overwrite the target directory (default is to assume target does not exist)
-b Base path is abbreviated; it begins in the present working directory. Do not lead with `/` if in pwd. Default looks for a full path
-t Target path is abbreviated; it beings in the pwd. Do not lead with `/` if in pwd. Same as -b, but for *target*
-h Display a shorter version of this block
Examples:
datasort /home/user/Dropbox /mnt/DataDrive/Backup
This would copy Dropbox to Backup on a mounted device. In this case, Backup should not exist already.
datasort -e /home/user/Dropbox /mnt/DataDrive/Backup
This is the same as the first example, except that Backup can already exist and have content.
Assume for the next example that datasort is in your /usr/bin folder, and you are launching the command from ~/
datasort -tb Documents datasorttest/one
This will run datasort on /home/user/Documents and put the output into /home/user/datasorttest/one, a directory which does not exist yet.
datasort will print out first a list of all the extensions it scrapes and then each file as it moves it. Additonally, if it encounters any errors with moving files, it will collect the names of the files and print them at the end of the process along with an error statement. Typically, in my experience, errors are related to permissions issues. If you get an error, try running datasort as root.