How to recover data after OS failure using Emergency Recovery CD

The instructions provided below will help you recover lost data from a damaged and re-formatted operating system and accidentally deleted files from a system partition.

Failures of an operating system can be caused by several factors:

1. virus attacks;
2. damage of OS boot sector;
3. accidental deletion of system files;
4. logical damages of a file system;
5. physical damages (where the best solution would be to take the device to a data recovery service center in order not to aggravate data loss).

In most cases the operating system can be repaired through re-installation only. But before you start system re-installation you should bear in mind that chances to recover important files after installation of a new operating system will be close to zero. Until then you can still try to recover your files.

Instructions:

1. Download UFS Explorer Backup and Emergency Recovery CD. The disk image contains full-featured Linux operating system and pre-installed UFS Explorer Standard Recovery for Linux that provide safe environment for data recovery.
2. Burn the downloaded disk image to a disk. For example, from Windows operating system you can burn .iso file to a CD with the following utilities ISO Recorder and InfraRecorder; from Linux via a command line or GUI CD/DVD Creator; from Mac OS — Disk Utility.
3. Boot the operating system from Emergency Recovery CD. To do this insert Live CD into CD/DVD drive and choose 'boot from CD' in BIOS settings of your PC (for detailed information read the motherboard manual).
4. At the next PC start there must be a notification about booting from CD, otherwise booting from CD won't start. Please, wait until Linux graphical shell boots.
5. Start UFS Explorer Standard Recovery for Linux with superuser rights. You will find application start shortcut, user manual and other useful files on the desktop.
6. Carefully read user manual. Recovering your data follow the instructions.
7. To save recovered files you'll need an external storage, because in the process of recovery the data are copied to 'local file system' (RAM-disk). Otherwise, all the data will be lost after reset. You can copy recovered files to an external USB drive as well. To do this click 'Places', select folder 'Connected Media' and then a folder of the required storage.

Hint: Copying files of a large size (more than 2GB) to an external USB flash drive may cause some difficulties, because FAT file systems that are generally used on such storages are limited to saving files with maximum size of 2GB. This problem can be resolved formatting the USB flash drive with NTFS (Windows file system) or Ext 3 file system 'native' for Linux. You can format the storage in Ubuntu Linux environment booted with Live CD. To do this select Administration in menu System and then Partition Editor. The application Gparted will start where in the right corner you can select the external storage you want to format.

Warning: Please beware: make sure you've selected the right storage for formatting, check if it contains important information because all the information will be lost after formatting. 

Running UFS Explorer under Linux

In order to access physical drives, software must be started with 'root' privileges. There are several methods to run the software using Windows Manager or command line. In order to run, UFS Explorer software requires running X Window system with any desktop window manager, including simple XDM.

If you are logged in as limited user, to run the software with access to local physical drives, you have to elevate software privileges. You may do this using:

• gksu GNOME utility (when available);
• kdesu KDE utility (when available);
• su or sudo command line utility.

In case user has no rights use 'switch user' you have to either re-login under different user account or grant 'su' right to the user. More information is available in the documentation for your Linux distribution.

If you are logged in as a root, no elevation is required and you may run UFS Explorer software directly (including using of desktop manager applications menu).

The software is installed by default into /usr/bin/ folder and thus should be available for invoking without full path specification (available in "${PATH}").

The application names for UFS Explroer editions are:

• ufsxsci - Standard Recovery edition;
• ufsxrci - RAID Recovery edition;
• ufsxpci - Professional Recovery edition.

To run the software from command line, type application executable name e.g.:
#> ufsxsci

If elevation is required, run it with elevation:
$> su root -c ufsxsci
or
$> sudo ufsxsci


If nothing happens

First make sure there are no error messages or incorrect syntax reports. If no error is reported and application does not appear, please make sure of the following:

• Connected hard drives have good data connection and no bad blocks - this causes long delay on program start.
• OS has no pending states such as pending update installations etc. - it's recommended to restart your system before you continue software using.

New web site

The UFS Explorer web site had been reworked introducing new web pages structure and new design. Some elements were removed, merged or modified so it's recommended to update any stored permanent links to our web site.

Version 5 update

SysDev Laboratories introduces update to entire products line of UFS Explorer data recovery system utilities. The new version 5 of cross-platform UFS Explorer software features comprehensive and most up to date tool set for lost and deleted data recovery. It suits best for both individuals and experts in data recovery.
The most current tools allow to recover accidentally deleted files, recover data after file system damage, caused by software or hardware malfunction, computer viruses, power outages etc.

The software supports most popular file systems (including FAT, NTFS, UFS/UFS2, XFS, Ext2/3/4, ReiserFS, HFS/HFS+, JFS/JFS2, NWFS/NSS, VMFS, ZFS etc.) and different kinds of physical storage media (including hard disks, flash drives, memory cards, disk images, virtual disks).

All UFS Explorer software features unique data recovery technologies that include complete and partial meta data analysis, fuzzy-logic for missing meta data reconstruction and IntelliRAW™ technology used to find good files even when all file system meta data is destroyed.

With new products line there are introduced four major data recovery software editions:

• Standard Recovery - the mass data recovery product supporting all the key data recovery functions.
• RAID Recovery - the extended edition of Standard Recovery software, specially adopted for RAID recovery operations.
• Raise Data Recovery - the inexpensive alternative for Standard Recovery software for one-time data recovery, supporting only single file system per software edition.
• Professional Recovery - professional oriented data recovery software - the comprehensive tool for data recovery, data damage diagnostics and file recovery.

The data access software edition is represented by UFS Explorer Standard Access software.

More information about new software editions, detailed product features comparison and product functions can be found on the software web site.