Thursday, August 14, 2014

Encrypted NAS recovery

We are continuing research of capabilities of protected/encrypted NAS recovery of devices from different vendors. So far we can provide data recovery services for the following types of protected/encrypted storages:
  • Buffalo Terastation full disk encryption. When it is required to recover lost/deleted data or access data after hardware/firmware failure, we are able to recover lost encryption key that is required to decrypt the storage with UFS Explorer Professional Recovery or Linux dmcrypt.
  • QNAP full disk encryption. The NAS uses vendor-specific procedure to enhance security of LUKS encryption password. Using password and NAS-specific data, we are able to recover encryption key that is required to decrypt the storage with UFS Explorer Professional Recovery.
  • Drobo password-protected NAS. For purposes of lost data recovery or recovery after NAS failure, it is possible to bypass password protection and recover data directly from "Beyond RAID".
  • Certain LUKS enabled NAS. Many popular NAS use standard (unchanged) LUKS encryption that is compatible with Linux and UFS Explorer Professional Recovery software. To recover data from this kind of NAS you will only need "administrator" (data access) password to be provided.

If you are interested in assistance with protected/encrypted NAS recovery, please, request our services via general contact form.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Data recovery from Drobo NAS/DAS/iSCSI

We are glad to announce support of data recovery services from Drobo storage devices. Our recent researches on "Beyond RAID" technology now allow supporting lost data recovery from most known Drobo models, including NAS devices, DAS configurations, iSCSI configurations. This also includes support of multi-LUN and mixed storages.
 
Cases that can be covered include "bricked" NAS after failed firmware update, different NAS failures during rebuild, partial RAID metadata loss, drive failures etc. Support of "Beyond RAID" redundancy allows recovering data even from incomplete set of drives (if RAID redundancy allows this).
 
Drobo recovery is only available as "remote recovery service" at fixed price 100..250 Euro per RAID component in initial configuration (lower price is applicable for simply "bricked" NAS after firmware or hardware failure).
 
The service can be requested via general contact form. The data recovery service fee is only applicable for successfully completed data recovery and there are no "analysis" or "attempt" fees.

Major update: version 5.16

Starting from version 5.16 the software now preserves file creation and file modification dates from original file system as well as from virtually reconstructed file system after data recovery scan.
These dates also appeared in file system object properties dialog as object attributes.
 
In Professional Recovery software edition there are implemented as standard few additional RAID configurations:
 

RAID 1E - "shifted stripe" configuration

 
 
1. Sample of RAID 1E pattern with "shifted stripe" on 5 disks

 
This configuration has 1 drive of guaranteed redundancy and can be built using 3 disks and more.
 
 
RAID 1E - "running mirror" configuration
 
 
2. Sample of RAID 1E pattern with "running mirror" on 5 disks
 


The configuration has the same properties like RAID 1E "shifted stripe", however has different data allocation strategy. For even number of drives the configuration can be considered as similar to RAID 10 by structure and properties.
 

RAID 6 with compact right-asymmetric parity rotation

 

3. Sample of RAID 6 with compact right-asymmetric rotation on 5 disks
 
This configuration is now supported with both P->Q and Q->P redundancy order and different kinds of indexes assignment for Reed-Solomon code for data recovery with 2 missing drives.
 
Among other useful features there are:
  • Support of "capitalization" attribute for 8.3 DOS file names;
  • In-place editor for RAID Definition Language (RDL) in UFS Explorer Professional Recovery.
 
This update is considered as recommended for data recovery and forensics specialists

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Software update: version 5.15.3

This software update was related to file dates, reported by the software. Starting from version 5.15.3 the software preserves not only date of file modification, but also date of "creation" and "last access" date. This feature applies only to Windows software version (Linux and Mac OS use these date attributes differently).
With support of these date attributes there was also introduced support for precise time, that include local time adjustment basing on current time zone, daylight saving time settings and etc.

Among other implemented changes are:
  • fixed bug preventing recognition of ZFS file systems in certain scenarios;
  • 8.3 file names on FAT/FAT32 file system are now considered lower-case;
  • rework of file dates handling procedures.
This update is recommended to cases related to ZFS file system as well as to cases related to forensics when file dates precision is critical.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Software update: version 5.15.2

This update is considered as minor, however it adds valuable features, related to Windows dynamic disks. Starting version 5.15.2 all software editions support dynamic disks over GPT that resolve partition identification issues on big drives.
The other function is better support of NT LDM metadata to properly handle "generic" volumes, including "simple", "mirror" and "spanned" volumes. Support of "stripe" and "RAID5" remains unchanged.
In this release there are also fixed few bugs, including software termination issue from iconic state under Windows in certain scenarios.
This update is considered as "recommended".
 

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Minor update: version 5.15.1

This software update resolves several compatibility issues found after analysis of older file systems. Among important improvements is better support of file attribute separation on NTFS via "Attribute Lists" and as result - possibly better recovery quality in certain scenarios.

This update is considered as "recommended".

Monday, April 21, 2014

Software update: version 5.15

This update introduces support of actual most recent version of ZFS file system, with support of all current standard compression algorithms (LZJB, LZ4, ZLE, GZIP). This does not introduce support of complex (RAID-Z) volumes.
Also in this update were fixed many found problems. Among them are minor issues in user interface, missing translation of some interface elements (under Mac OS) etc.
The update is recommended for all users of software version 5.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Software update: version 5.14

This software update is major and includes many new features, problem fixes and reworked functions. Following new features are available since version 5.14:
  • Advanced filter and parameters specification for file copying via "Copy with parameters..." tool. This function allows precise specification how and what to copy with bulk data copying operations.
  • Supported Apple Software RAID. In RAID editions of UFS Explorer this allows to build apple "software RAID" automatically.
  • File name and path now shown in "file already exists" dialog. This extension of "file conflict" dialog now allows specifying precise type and location of the conflict.
  • Chunked VMware VMDK files now can be opened using "disk descriptor file". This allows to open "chunked" VMDK files as a single virtual disk even in non-RAID software editions.
Total rework applies to modification and unification of "file copying" procedure. Now it works same way in all software editions.

The following problems were found and fixed since previous release:
  • Fixed "Dot issue" at the end of folder name under Windows;
  • Better support of old big-endian UFS;
  • VMDK partial cluster issue is fixed for ESX 5 VMFS;
  • Fixed legacy HFS compatibility issue;
  • Software now properly handles "dirty" file allocation B-tree on Ext4 file system;
  • Fixed bug in restoring connection to offline network attached drives under Windows;
  • Fixed crash in RAID builder if disk is disconnected during RAID reconstruction;
  • Removed condition for hang of adaptive RAID5 reconstruction procedure.
The specified bugs may affect many users, so this update is recommended to all users of software version 5.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Minor update: software version 5.12.1

In this minor update there were fixed several reported issues. Major of them is complete switching to using of long file paths under Windows OS with extra path validation to resolve issues related to saving files from  Linux-based systems and NAS with extremely long file/folder paths.
The other fixes include fixing of reported visual and performance related issues.

The update applies to all UFS Explorer editions as well as to Raise Data Recovery software.