Note: This is the source code for Scalpel 1.60, a fast header/footer-based file carver. Version 1.60 is the most widely used public release, but if you are still using 1.60, you should really be using 2.02, which has more features and is much faster. That repo can be found at https://github.com/nolaforensix/scalpel-2.02.
Neither this release nor 2.02 are being actively developed and if you're simply doing file carving to retrieve deleted files of common types, you probably should be using photorec instead, since photorec has moved beyond the simplistic header/footer-based approach used by Scalpel 1.60 and 2.02. On the other hand, if you are developing patterns to recover esoteric file types, you may find that Scalpel is still useful.
There are some changes in this release, compared to the 1.60 release that's been in the wild for roughly the last 15 years. Some minor memory leaks that went unnoticed until very recently have been corrected, mostly in code that was imported from other open source projects when Scalpel was first developed. Thanks to Karley Waguespack for assisting with tracking these down.
scalpel3 is now under development and supports not only header/footer-based file carving, but also much more sophisticated recovery options and high-performance recovery of fragmented files. A public repo for scalpel3 will appear when it's ready.
Cheers,
--Golden
Original documentation in README follows.
Scalpel is a complete rewrite of the Foremost 0.69 file carver. This version of Scalpel reads Foremost 0.69 configuration files--see the default configuration file, scalpel.conf, for more details.
Important note: The default configuration file has all supported file patterns commented out--you must edit this before before running Scalpel.
More details on execution options can be found in the Scalpel man page, "scalpel.1".
Currently supported operating systems: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X.
If you decide to compile Scalpel on win32, you'll need to install pthreads-win32 and hack the Makefile to reflect where you've installed the pthreads include and lib directories. If you want to run Scalpel on win32 w/o these hassles, just use the win32 executable that's provided in the distribution.
COMPILE INSTRUCTIONS:
Linux: make
Win32: make win32 [or mingw32-make win32]
Mac OS X: make bsd
and enjoy. If you want to install the binary and man page in a more permanent place, just copy "scalpel" and "scalpel.1" to appropriate locations, e.g., on Linux, "/usr/local/bin" and "/usr/local/man/man1", respectively. On Windows, you'll also need to copy "pthreadGC1.dll" into the same directory as "scalpel.exe".
LIMITATIONS:
Carving Windows physical and logical device files (e.g., \.\physicaldrive0 or \.\c:) isn't currently supported, but will be supported in a future release.
SUGGESTIONS:
Bug reports, comments, complaints, and feature requests should be directed to the author at goldenrichard@gmail.com.
Cheers,
--Golden