When a file is deleted on common file systems, the operating system typically removes the directory reference and marks the previously used clusters/blocks asunallocated, but the underlying file content may remain on disk until it is overwritten. Digital forensics procedures emphasize that recovering such deleted content often requires examining unallocated space rather than relying only on file system metadata.Autopsy's "Data Carving"function is specifically intended for this purpose: it scans unallocated space (and sometimes slack space) forfile signatures(headers/footers and internal structure patterns) and reconstructs recoverable files even when the original filename, path, or metadata is missing.
This directly matches the scenario: Jack recovered deleted files fromunallocated space, which is the classic use case for carving. The other options in Autopsy support different investigative goals.Timeline analysiscorrelates timestamps from multiple artifacts to reconstruct sequences of activity, but it does not itself reconstruct deleted file content from raw disk areas.Web artifactsfocuses on browser history, downloads, cookies, and related traces.Multimediahelps categorize and analyze media files (e.g., images/videos), but it is not the primary mechanism for recovering deleted data from unallocated space. Therefore, the Autopsy function that enabled the recovery described isData carving (D)