On rare occasions, you may find that a file geodatabase has been damaged and can no longer be opened. This usually occurs because one or more of the files in the file geodatabase directory have been deleted. Frequently, these files include the system schema tables (which contain the file names) and the geodatabase metadata files that define relationships and complex data types such as topologies and geometric networks. The Recover File Geodatabase tool opens each of the tables in the damaged file geodatabase directory, reads the file's header, and creates a copy of each table in a new file geodatabase. If the system schema tables are still present, table names are preserved; if not, new names are assigned.
The Recover File Geodatabase tool can only recover simple feature classes (point, multipoint, polyline, and polygon) and tables. Complex data such as annotation, raster datasets, networks, and relationships will not be recovered. After you recover the file geodatabase, you will need to re-create these complex datasets.