MATLAB: How to recover data from a corrupt MAT-file

Question

When I attempt to load a MAT-file created in MATLAB 7.2 (R2006a), I receive the following error:

???Error using ==> load

Unable to read MAT file /home/$dir

File may be corrupt.

I, however, am able to view the variables in the MAT-file with the following command:

whos -file corruptMATFileName

I would like to recover this data. The MATZEROFIX file I found on MATLAB Central did not recover the data.

Answer 1

The issue might be caused by the presence of a corrupt zero-byte tag in the MAT-file. If this is the case, one might be able to extract the data from the MAT-file until a corrupt zero-byte tag is reached.

Please download the following SPLITMAT file in your current folder of MATLAB. Also, please ensure that the corruptMATFile is in the same current folder.

Then use the command as detailed below:

splitmat corruptMATFileName % Do not include the .mat extension

The above command will generate "n" MAT-files: corruptMATFileName_1.mat through corruptMATFileName_n.mat, each containing a variable contained in the original MAT-file.

If this command does not work, you may also try the following syntax to recover non-corrupted variables from the MAT-file:

>> load('<corrupted_file>.mat', '<uncorrupted_variable>');