Situation:
UnErase recovers data and resource forks separately. You want to rejoin these forks.

Solution:
The data fork is the portion of the file that holds the data, and thus is the most important part of the file. The resource fork holds information which is usually secondary to the actual file data, such as the file name, custom icons, image previews, Page Setup preferences, and so on. Most file types do not require resource forks in order to function, although some do. In some cases, if a resource fork is required but unavailable for a particular file, you can use a resource fork from another file of the same type.

Data forks are recovered with generic names (for example, "Quicken 5.0/6.0/7.0 #614"), which can make files difficult to identify. Resource forks are very helpful in this respect, because they do contain the file name (for example, "My Accounts.rsrc"). In most cases, the resource fork and the data fork will be adjacent in the list, provided that you have not sorted or filtered the list in any way. You can often tell what the original name of a data fork was, because the resource fork (which retains the file name) appears either immediately before or immediately after the data fork. If Speed Disk has been run on the drive, this ordering will remain consistent throughout the drive: Speed Disk always places the data fork first. Otherwise, individual applications may write the forks in either order.

To rejoin the forks

1. Do not sort or filter the list. If you change the ordering of the list, it will separate associated forks.
2. Select the desired data fork.
3. Select the associated resource fork; it will normally be adjacent to the data fork, either immediately before or immediately after it. Although sometimes you will need to guess, it is often apparent which resource fork goes with which data fork.
4. With exactly two items selected, choose Tools and click Join Forks, or press Command+J. (The key shortcut is very useful if you have many forks to rejoin.)
5. In the file dialog, specify a name and destination for the newly created joined file. In most cases, you should give the joined file the name shown in the resource fork.

TIP:
To find as many resource forks as possible when searching (and therefore have the best chance of recovering file names), check the box to search for Resource Forks on the Customize Search page in UnErase. The reason for this is that if you do not have this box checked, resource forks will be found only if they match specific types and creators. For example, if you are finding QuickTime movies, resource forks would be found only if the movies had been saved by MoviePlayer, but not from Premiere or any other application. If you check the box, resource forks will be found for all QuickTime movies, regardless of the application that created them.

Note that checking this box will greatly increase the number of files found, because UnErase will find the resource forks of applications, extensions, system files, fonts, and so on, as well as those of your document files. You will find many resource forks with no data forks adjacent to them; in most cases, you do not need to recover these, as they are not likely to contain data that you have created.