Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Software update: version 5.2 released

SysDev Laboratories introduces the next regular update to UFS Explorer software family: the software version 5.2. This is the free update for users of version 5 software and is recommended for installation. Users of previous software versions (4 and below) may move to version 5.2 of the software according to terms and conditions of UFS Explorer software upgrade policy. The software is available for download from download section of UFS Explorer web site.


What's new in this update

The update introduces new features and resolutions for several usability issues. The new functions include:


Sun ZFS file system recovery (Professional Recovery edition).

In addition to ZFS file system access support, new version 5.2 of UFS Explorer Professional Recovery introduces support of data recovery from ZFS file system. The software now allows to find, open or scan ZFS volumes and recover files after data loss or file system damage. The software analyses file system for file system modification transactions and snapshots. This allows to build file system modifications history and thus allow to recover lost files from previous file system states. Because of large amount of metadata, it’s recommended to use 64bit software edition for ZFS recovery.

The software is limited to support of simple ZPOOL volumes and does not support RAID-Z configurations.


Better NTFS recovery (Recovery editions)

The software now better detects Master File Table metadata file truncation that guarantees better data recovery rate with short scan and more accurate file system reconstruction with long (sector-by-sector) scan.


Better FAT32 recovery (Recovery editions)

The software now supports deleted files recovery after cluster number truncation that ensures accurate deleted files recovery in this situation. Merging IntelliRAW scan stage into main scan stage significantly reduces data recovery scan time.


Offline network shares (All editions)

The “File open” and “File save” dialogs under Windows OS now also display “offline” network shared folders (disconnected persistent network shares). The software supports restoration of this kind of network connections. On demand it prompts for network username and password. This feature allows to restore network connection transparently when shared folder is connected under unprivileged user account context and requested by privileged user account under Windows Vista or Windows 7 with enabled UAC.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

How to recover lost data from Linux operating system

Linux operating systems support a wide range of file systems that include Ext2/Ext3/Ext4, XFS ReiserFS, JFS (JFS2). These file systems differ in their structures and performance parameters which influence possibility and quality of data recovery. 
Success of data recovery is also affected by the following factors:
  1. the time your PC operates after the data loss. The less your computer works after the incident the highest chances for successful data recovery you have.
  2. partition fragmentation degree. The higher the partition fragmentation degree is, the more difficult it'll be to recover a file completely.
Data recovery from a storage with physical damages may cause permanent data loss. In this case we recommend that you not recover lost data by yourself and rather take the hard drive to a specialized data recovery center.


Instructions:
  1. As soon as you discovered loss of your data you should stop all read/write operations to the partition of the hard drive or the storage you're going to recover your data from. Read/write operations include programs installation, copying, saving and download from Internet. Note that start of certain already installed programs may also cause writing to the disk if these programs use the disk to save their settings or other files such as cash browser, media players play lists, games savings etc.
  2. You should immediately unmount the partition or folder with lost data. This precaution will let you avoid possible overwriting of lost information.
  3. Draw up a list of lost files you're going to recover. Note major file descriptions (name, type, size, last saved time). Even if recovery of file name wouldn't be successful such kind of information will help you find necessary file.
  4. Select the partition where you'll conduct recovery of lost information from. This should be intact partition where no data disappeared.
  5. Download UFS Explorer Standard Recovery for Linux and install it to the partition you selected for recovery operations.
  6. Start the software with superuser rights required to get access to disks.
  7. Please read the manual carefully.
  8. Copy recovered files to another partition or storage or network disk.

Hint: If your data are lost from a root directory we recommend that you use EmergencyRecovery CD to ensure safe and secure data recovery environment.

Warning: Never write, install or copy anything to the partition or storage where the data loss occurred. Otherwise, you may cause overwriting and permanent loss of important information.

Friday, February 17, 2012

How to recover lost data from Windows operating system

If you noticed loss of important files from your Windows operating system don't give up. Your files may still be recoverable. Following our recommendations try to recover them by yourself.
Data recovery operation from FAT or NTFS is not that hard to carry out. However, before you start recovery you should consider some facts:

If your files were lost from a system partition, we recommend that you recover your data using Emergency Recovery CD.
  1. Data recovery from a storage with physical damages may cause permanent data loss. In this case we recommend that you not recover lost data by yourself and rather take the hard drive to a specialized data recovery center.
  2. The less time your computer works after data loss the highest chances for successful data recovery you have.
To recover lost data from Windows FAT and NTFS file systems we recommend that you apply UFS Explorer Standard Recovery as the most comprehensive solution.

Instructions:
  1. As soon as you discovered loss of your data you should stop all read/write operations to the partition of the hard drive or the storage you're going to recover your data from. Read/write operations include programs installation, copying, saving and download from Internet. Note that start of certain already installed programs may also cause writing to the disk if these programs use the disk to save their settings or other files such as web browser cache, media players play lists, games savings etc.
  2. Select the partition where you'll conduct recovery of lost information. Draw up the list of lost files you're going to recover. Note major file descriptions (name, type, size, last saved time). Even if recovery of file name wouldn't be successful such kind of information will help you find necessary file.
  3. Download UFS Explorer Standard Recovery and install it to the intact partition where no data disappeared.
  4. Start the software with Administrator rights required to get access to disks. Please read the manual carefully.
  5. Select the partition you're going to recover data from and start the scan.
  6. Copy recovered files to another partition or storage. Copying recovered files to the same partition where they were recovered from may cause their permanent loss.
Hint: No software can guarantee 100% successful recovery of lost and deleted files. You can ensure safety and intactness of your files through timely backups only.

Warning: Never write, install or copy anything to the partition or storage where the data loss occurred. Otherwise, you may cause overwriting and permanent loss of important information.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Data recovery from RAID systems

Nowadays, RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is widely used by home users for their personal computers as a method to speed-up, extend or add redundancy to the main disk storage. RAID-systems are supported today not only by expensive specialized controllers of corporate servers, but also as part of a disk controller on inexpensive motherboards.
Quite stable cost-efficient solutions like Intel ICHxx-R southbridge chips allow to easily deploy a RAID system on a PC. Unfortunately, even the best RAID systems don't feature ever-lasting performance and can fail any time due to many factors, e.g. software or hardware failures. Choosing a reliable data recovery software with tools specially designed for data recovery from complex RAID-systems you substantially increase the chances to get your data back in full scale. Our products can help you recover data from RAID systems, even if RAID failure caused file system damage.


Non-redundant systems

The term RAID defining (RAID level 0, Stripe) or JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks, Span) is quite incorrect . These RAID systems have the following practical uses:

JBOD - extended storage consisting of several disks, even of different size. Each component of JBOD follows the previous one to provide monolithic storage with the size equal to the sum of component sizes. JBOD is supported by most hardware and software RAID chips (e.g. Dynamic Disks under Windows can span among different disks or disk partitions).

RAID0 - stripe set on disks of equal size. The data on RAID0 are divided into 'stripes' of equal size and cyclically distributed among all disks. Such 'stripe' size is usually from 512 bytes and up to 256KB. The purpose of data striping is to distribute a long data fragment among all disks that allows to issue data exchange requests to all drives and at the same time substantially speed-up this operation with parallel read or write. RAID0 systems are the fastest and they use the whole disk space.

Perspectives of data recovery from these systems are obvious: even if one disk drive from RAID0 could not be read data from this component could not be recovered. If such failure occurs on JBOD entire fragment of span could not be recovered anymore. For RAID0 this will affect all data on RAID (e.g. if RAID0 is built on 4 disks with stripe size 16KB, after failure of one disk RAID will have 16KB 'hole' followed by 48KB block. In general, this would mean any file with size over 48KB cannot be recovered).

If one or more disks from RAID0 or JBOD failed stop using the disk immediately and take it to a data recovery laboratory. Only physical drive repair could help recover the data!

In case of a system failure not related to disks (e.g. reset of controller settings, controller failure or damage etc.) it's possible to recover data even in case of file system logical damage. The only thing you need is to virtually assemble the original monolithic storage with data recovery software. For this you need to specify the disks included into RAID, drive order and stripe size for RAID0. Data recovery software will read data from components in the same manner RAID controller does and it will be able to access good files on virtually reconstructed RAID.


Mirrors

Typical 'mirror' implementation is called RAID1. Each component of RAID1 contains the same data, thus information could be recovered from any good RAID component. For RAID1 controller can perform parallel reading to speed-up files read access. This kind of storage has the highest level of redundancy and the best perspectives of data recovery.

Data recovery with an efficient data recovery software doesn't require any other actions except direct reading of one RAID component.

Advanced redundant systems

These systems are a compromise between high speed of storage access, storage size and redundancy. Usually they apply the idea of striping from RAID0 but on-disk data is extended with an extra information (parity information) that adds redundancy and facilitates data recovery or even continues RAID operations even after component failure.

Advanced redundant systems include RAID3, RAID4 or RAID7 (stripe set with dedicated parity), RAID5 (stripe set with distributed parity) and RAID6 (stripe set with double distributed parity). 'Single' parity means that data can be recovered from RAID or RAID system can operate after failure of single component; 'double' parity – after failure of up to two components.

RAID3 and the similar systems use classic RAID0, extended with one more disk to store parity. RAID5 and RAID6 distribute parity among all disks to speed-up parity update process for data write operations.

Data can be recovered from advanced redundant systems if RAID-systems has all disks working, as well as if one (for RAID3, RAID4, RAID5, RAID7) or up to two (for RAID6) components could not be read. If more disks failed stop using the disk(s) immediately and take it to a data recovery laboratory. Only physical drive repair could help recover your data!

If data recovery is possible without drive repair assemble your RAID with a data recovery software by specifying drives (including placeholders for a missing drive), drives' order, stripe size and parity distribution algorithm. The data recovery software will read data from components in the same manner as RAID controller does, thus it'll manage access to good files on virtually reconstructed RAID.

Hybrid systems

Vendors often use RAID-on-RAID configurations to improve performance, add redundancy and increase failure resistance. Generally, such systems are combinations of non-redundant RAID systems, 'mirrors' and advanced redundant systems. RAID10 is the most typical system of the group, it employs several 'mirrors' with 'stripe' over them. Here mirrors ensure redundancy and stripe over mirrors adds read/write speed. Data recovery from this system is not a complicated task: take any good component from each mirror and virtually build RAID0 over it.

More advanced hybrid systems include RAID50 (stripe over RAID5), RAID51 (mirror of RAID5) etc. In order to reconstruct RAID 51 you need to build each RAID5 component, and for RAID50 - build RAID0 over a set of RAID5.

Efficient data recovery software will help you reconstruct a complex RAID-system of any level and will increase chances to recover your data. 

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Running UFS Explorer under FreeBSD

There are special edition of UFS Explorer software designed to run under FreeBSD OS and its clones (such as PC BSD OS). The software is binary compatible with latest production versions of 7.4, 8.2 and 9.0 and there are native binary builds for x86 (i386) and x86_64 (amd64) processor architectures.

The possible issue of running UFS Explorer under different FreeBSD versions and editions could be "libz" shared library used to supply standard compression algorithms. Because different versions and editions of FreeBSD may supply different versions of "libz" (named "/lib/libz.so.4" in FreeBSD 7.4, "/lib/libz.so.5" in FreeBSD 8.2 etc.) there are possible compatibility issues: the software is bound to "/lib/libz.so.5".

In case you have problems of running UFS Explorer under FreeBSD and reported error is missing dependency of "libz.so.5",  the recommended workaround is to supply your currently installed version of "libz" as a source for "libz.so.5". The following steps should be applied:
1) Check for currently installed version of libz.so:
# ls /lib | grep libz.so
The example output:
libz.so.4
2) Check for links to libz.so and make sure no link yet created for "libz.so.5":
# ls /usr/lib | grep libz.so
The example output:
libz.so
3) Create symbolic link in "/usr/lib" folder to your currently installed libz.so (e.g. "libz.so.4" as per example at step 1):
# ln -s /lib/libz.so.4 /usr/lib/libz.so.5

The steps above should resolve "libz" compatibility issue; this verification is also implemented in the software installer script and works automatically on software installation.

Please let us know if there are other compatibility issues for BSD software edition.

In case you are interested in UFS Explorer other than Standard Recovery software edition for BSD operating system, please contact us: other software editions can be supplied on demand.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Software update: version 5.1 released

SysDev Laboratories introduces the next regular update to UFS Explorer software family: the software version 5.1. This is the free update for users of version 5 software and is recommended for installation. Users of previous software versions (4 and below) may move to version 5.1 of the software according to terms and conditions of UFS Explorer software upgrade policy. The software is available for download from download section of UFS Explorer web site.

What's new in this update
The update includes implementation of new file system, data recovery and data access algorithms enhancements, user interface tweaking. Among key modifications are:
  • Support of ExFAT file system. The file system was introduced by Microsoft Corporation as an alternative for older FAT and FAT32 file systems. It pushes most limitations of these file systems and could be used for flash/SSD storages of larger capacity and to store large files. UFS Explorer software now implements files access for data stored on ExFAT on all OS platforms as well as supports damaged ExFAT volumes reconstruction and deleted files recovery. Raise Data Recovery for FAT now includes support of ExFAT file system. In UFS Explorer Professional Recovery implemented full support of ExFAT file system, including metadata structures navigation and analysis.
  • Better support for Sun (Oracle) ZFS file system. Now software supports both x86 and Sun-SPARC variations of ZFS, as well as mixed file system format. The software still not supports ZFS file systems created on RAID-Z pools.
  • Better support of VMFS file system, including support of newer VMFS5 in UFS Explorer Professional Recovery. The software includes metadata analysis and file fragments navigation (including allocation analysis for virtual disks).
  • User interface enhancements, including explanation of scan stages in Professional Recovery and scan optimization for larger file systems with more files.
Please post your feature requests or problem reports to UFS Explorer support team through SysDev Laboratories general contact form.

Mobile devices: data recovery specifics


Computing power of modern mobile phones and PDA often allows them to replace classic computers or laptops in such situations when you're on a holiday or business trip or just on the way. That's why these devices often serve to store some important personal or business information.

Being frequently exploited these devices are highly exposed to failures and data loss that may occur at any time. Fortunately, data recovery from mobile devices is possible. Moreover, computing power of PDA or mobile phones could be targeted at recovery of lost information from photo cameras and other compatible digital devices. The only thing you need is to download a proper data recovery software to your mobile phone or PDA and start recovery.

Mobile recovery specifics

Derived from embedded or desktop Windows CE OS, Windows Mobile provides device vendors with full-featured OS to run various applications on compact devices. Compatibility of Windows Mobile API with desktop Windows OS allows third-party vendors to create many applications for this OS. That's why Windows-Mobile-based compact devices now can contain much personal and business information: photos, documents, presentations, email databases etc.

Perspectives to recover lost information from this kind of devices depend much on architecture of a modern device. The most widely used configuration is small amount of 'main storage' and larger 'external storage' that uses embedded flash memory or removable flash memory cards.

Such 'external storage' is a physical flash chip or a flash card that permanently stores electronic information. This storage logically works exactly like a flash stick, connected to a computer and stores files to real file system (usually FAT or FAT32). Data recovery from this kind of storage is obvious and works exactly like on personal computers using specialized data recovery software.

In contrast to 'external storage', the 'main storage' is a virtual file system, emulated by special driver. This file system doesn't actually exist and is built on-the-fly by the driver from in-memory objects, stored in RAM and ROM. RAM is a volatile storage sensitive to power. That's why low-level power failure or 'could reboot' causes permanent data loss without any recovery perspectives. Moreover, even file deletion in the main memory causes RAM region to be released and this part of the file system cannot be emulated anymore.

Regarding data recovery on Windows Mobile devices, we can tell about good data recovery perspectives from flash storage. Our specialized software is adopted to run directly on Windows Mobile devices and provide device owner with data recovery functions even on trip, far from a desktop computer. Moreover, having photo camera or other digital device with compatible flash card, you may easily insert it to Windows Mobile-based phone or PDA and recover lost photos and other files.

However, primary concern remains data recovery from the 'main storage' that usually stores SMS, e-mail and other important files. We continue our work on the device analysis to provide our customers with a software solution that could help resolve this kind of data loss problem.