After testing it against three different ransomware strains (including one that overwrote files with zeros), here is everything you need to know—when it works, when it fails, and how to use it like a forensic analyst. Let’s clear up the biggest misconception immediately.
Modern ransomware (post-2020) often uses the NtSetInformationFile with FileDispositionInfo to bypass the recycle bin. Some even call FSCTL_SET_ZERO_DATA to zero out clusters. The restore utility cannot recover what has been physically overwritten. Most people do this wrong. They run the tool on the infected system after the ransomware has been cleaned. That’s too late. Every second the system runs, the OS writes logs, updates, and temp files—overwriting the very sectors you want to carve. kaspersky restore utility
But physically, on a spinning disk or flash storage, “writing back” doesn’t always overwrite the exact same physical sectors. Sometimes the OS writes to a new location and marks the old sectors as “deleted” (but not erased). After testing it against three different ransomware strains
TL;DR: The Kaspersky Restore Utility is not a backup tool. It is a forensic-grade, signature-agnostic file-carving engine designed to resurrect data from drives that ransomware has deliberately tried to destroy. If you think your encrypted files are gone forever, this is your last line of defense. Some even call FSCTL_SET_ZERO_DATA to zero out clusters
File Carving. The Kaspersky Restore Utility scans the raw disk surface—bypassing the file system entirely. It looks for file headers, footers, and structural patterns (magic bytes for JPEG, DOCX, PDF, etc.). When ransomware encrypts a file, it usually writes the ciphertext over the original plaintext. However, due to how SSDs and HDDs handle wear leveling, TRIM commands, and slack space, fragments of the original file often remain.
