Opening .REC files

I'm not sure if this is the correct section but the problem seems to lie between my android / colour OS phone and my OTG thumbdrive so I'll post it here.

Does anyone knows how to open a .REC file?

I've copied some travel photos (.JPG files) onto my OTG thumbdrive as my phone has a tiny diskspace available. Initially, it works perfectly fine, until halfway throughout my travel, when I realised the last batch of photos I've copied onto my thumbdrive has been changed into .REC files (as FSCK0000.rec and so on) and now I can't open them either on my phone or on my laptop (windows).

I've researched abit and found out that these files are generated by FSCK on linux, and so wonder if it's caused by either my phone or the thumbdrive in recovery mode.

Long story short, I just want to know if there's anyway I can open these files as an image to view the photos, since I've tried all sorts of ways and software but they didn't work TWT TWT

Thank you for reading and looking forward for some replies here!

According to this earlier thread, fsck .rec files are often just renamed files of the original type. They are talking here about zip files but I imagine it applies to jpeg's too. They recommend using the file command to test these files and just renaming those that seem to be of the required type.

Hello,

Thank you very much for your kind reply.
I've came across that thread while searching for a solution but unfortunately just renaming the file extension to .JPG / .JPEG / .PNG didn't work for me as I still couldn't open the file in paint or photoshop or even just plainly viewing it as an image. Also tried renaming as .zip file but there's nothing to be extracted out either.

May I know how I should do to make a file command? It seems like a command in linux but I only have a windows 10 so not sure how I should go about doing it.

I've found a website that can decipher what the file is (http://mark0.net/onlinetrid.aspx), and the results generated gives me mixed feelings though. What does it means that the file type is null bytes?

Originally Posted by otoyomi Hello, May I know how I should do to make a file command? It seems like a command in linux but I only have a windows 10 so not sure how I should go about doing it.

I don't think there's an equivalent in Windows. The Linux file command uses a database of "magic numbers" (byte sequences that reliably begin certain types of files) to identify file types. Very useful because it means that you can get behind the suffixes!

I've found a website that can decipher what the file is (http://mark0.net/onlinetrid.aspx), and the results generated gives me mixed feelings though. What does it means that the file type is null bytes?

Null bytes sounds to me like an empty file.

Hello Hazel,

Thank you once again for your kind reply.
Hmm... Too bad I don't have a linux available for me to use currently, but will definitely keep your suggestion in mind and keep my files for the future when I get my hands on a linux system to try it out.
Though it does sound like bad news that they may end up like empty files like what you said ^^"

Currently I may not really need these photos in the end, since I have sent some to my friends and she had taken photos of the places we've been to too, so I might up getting photos from her instead if I really need them.
Hopefully in the future there's an easy method for us to open these .REC files (or recovery files generated by the system).

Thank you so much for all the help!

The easy way would be to script the use of file (mentioned earlier in this thread) so that it can rename the file accordingly. However, the name does not matter. All the normal programs that I am aware of ignore the name.

You mention that you don't have a normal system available at the moment. Most, if not all, of the usual desktop-oriented distros provide a Live version. These days it's usually part of the regular installation image. So, if you don't have your regular computer handy and only the one with the legacy operating system, you can make a bootable DVD or USB stick and then still work with the file names using a Live system.

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist You mention that you don't have a normal system available at the moment.

that's just lovely!