A system and a method for locating application-specific data that has been previously deleted and located in an address of the data storage device marked as being available for storing new data. The method includes accessing unidentified data from at least one data storage device; examining the unidentified data to detect at least one application-specific data pattern associated with at least one application; for each detected application-specific data pattern, executing an application-specific validation process to determine whether the unidentified data includes valid data associated with a corresponding application; and if it is determined that the unidentified data includes valid data associated with the corresponding application, then recovering the valid data.