Software upgrade: version 5.9

Next regular software update (version 5.9) introduces enhanced functions related to secure (encrypted) storage operations. Starting from this release software receives support of more decryption algorithms and support of storages protected using Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS).

New functions include:

• recognition and support of LUKS-encrypted volumes;
• password-based decryption of LUKS-encrypted volumes (using classic to Linux password-based access authentication);
• more supported encryption algorithms (including such popular as AES (Rijndael), Serpent, Twofish, Blowfish etc.;
• supported more cipher chaining modes, including popular CBC and more secure XTS.

UFS Explorer Professional Recovery now includes "Decrypt using LUKS information" tool.  Using LUKS metadata and valid user password it can decrypt encrypted volume in quite simple way. Raw encrypted storages can also be decrypted by specifying full cipher information (cipher algorithm, block chaining, "salt" method, decryption key).

The software is successfully tested with encrypted Network Attached Storages from popular vendors such as Buffalo and QNAP. Now it allows to recover even encrypted data in automated mode (if encryption key is known).

Software upgrade: version 5.8

After intermediate software release (version 5.7.1) we are glad to introduce new software version 5.8. This release includes several new features and among them:

• Full support of data recovery from Windows Server 2012 ReFS (Resilient File System). Supported functions include "read" access to ReFS formatted volumes from all supported operating system platforms, deleted files recovery from ReFS (this preserves file names, dates and structure), finding lost ReFS partitions and reconstruction of ReFS volumes after even severe damage and metadata corruption. Full support of data recovery from ReFS is only supported in UFS Explorer Professional Recovery.
• Public version of UFS Explorer gets Unix "divvy" partition layout support;
• UFS Explorer Professional Recovery also gets basic support of plain non-chunked EnCase Forensics image files.

The software upgrade is considered as recommended to all users of UFS Explorer version 5. If you have earlier software version, you may still upgrade to latest software version according to software upgrade policy.

Minor update: software version 5.7.1

In this update there are fixed several stability issues, including problems of handling "degraded" RAID 5 in certain scenarios. Other implemented updates include fixing of other reported minor usability or stability issues.
If you have any problems related to operating with degraded RAID 5, it's recommended to upgrade your software copy.

Software update: version 5.7 released

New software version 5.7 introduces new features and several problem fixes. The software is recommended for update to all version 5 software users.
The new features in version 5.7 comparing to 5.6 are:

• Support of large Ext4 volumes (over 16TB);
• Support of new generation of ZFS file system with use of "System attribute" instead of legacy "D-node";
• Supoport of VMFS 5 extension that provides extended block addressing in ".sbc.sf".

Among resolved problems are:

• Fixed read operation from RAID 3 with block size below 512 bytes;
• Fixed IntelliRAW scan bug (appeared in version 5.6) when "fragmentation" flag is enabled.

Please note that users of "Professional Recovery" version 5.6 and below for Windows OS will have to re-activate the software using updated registration code.

Software update: version 5.6 released

New software version 5.6 brings more optimization, features and problem fixes. The most major modification is rework of data storage schema of data recovery "engine" that now allows both to save more memory and preserve file modification dates of found (recovered) files. Obviously this is only applicable to files and folders with available file/folder modification dates and not applicable to "synthetic" files found with IntelliRAW.

New features also include feature that allows to define in-memory caching of opened storages.  This  can significantly enhance performance of slow storages or algorithmic RAID with small stripe size (such as 512 bytes for RAID 5 or RAID 0).

There are also solved several problems, including:

• problem with support of VMware "COWD" format used with ESX/ESXi virtual machine snapshots;
• data truncation problem on large VMware VMDK files;
• data truncation problem on extra large Ext3-Ext4 file system during data recovery scan.

The software is recommended for update. Please note however that data recovery scan results produced with older software versions (5.5.1 or below) can not be loaded with software version  5.6.

Minor software update: version 5.5.1

This version was released to resolve several software stability and usability issues, as well as include most recent modifications that were applied to software base logics. It's recommended to update your software version 5 to latest version 5.5.1.

The changes include:

 

Stability

• The update resolves sudden software crash if operating with double-degraded RAID level 6 and direct indexes for Reed-Solomon code (all RAID editions);
• There are corrected several mistakes in RAID Definition Language (RDL) syntax analyzer (Professional Recovery);
• Detected and resolved data consistency issue with parallel disk imaging (Professional Recovery);

Usability

• Speed optimization of certain utility operation (data modification, disk erasing etc.);
• Debian/Ubuntu Linux .deb packages: default "gksu" rights elevation for GUI shortcuts;
• Digital signature on Mac OS X software for compatibility with Mac OS X 10.8 Gatekeeper.

 

Features

• Better detection and recovery of HFS+ file systems with severe metadata damage;
• Support of optional storage caching for faster recovery from slow, chunked or very segmented storages (Professional Recovery);
• Support of mdadm/span with defined striping.

Software updated: vesion five and half

UFS Explorer is updated to version 5.5 and gets more useful features. The update is considered as "regular" and thus it is free for all users of previous 5.x versions. New software release is available for download from download section of UFS Explorer web site.

What's new in this update

Windows logical volumes
Starting version 5.5 software recognizes and displays Windows logical volumes for simplified and alternative representation of locally mounted drives. It keeps showing classic disk/partition structure, but extends it with new group containing only Windows logical drives. This makes logical drive identification easier and allows to access data on dynamic disks (software RAID) immediately.
If you do not need this feature, you may easily turn it off for faster software startup.

Automated RAID Reconstruction
In this release it was added support of fully automated RAID reconstruction, including support of complex RAID-on-RAID configuration. Software will now detect known RAID configurations and build RAID automatically just after software start. The feature supports both complete and incomplete RAID with redundancy, running them in "degraded" mode.
It keeps monitoring RAID components and if missing part of "degraded" RAID will appear, software automatically adjusts RAID configuration to include missing component.
Want to build RAID degraded? Software will not modify RAID configurations created by the user.

Faster RAID operations
Total rework of RAID subsystem introduces much faster data access in "asynchronous mode". This allows to speed-up access on "striped" RAID (such as RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 3 etc.) by several times for storage scan and data extraction purposes. This mode allows to speed-up even "degraded" RAID operations and scan RAID 5 or RAID 6 with missing drives much faster than single drive.

Adaptive RAID Recovery
Both classic synchronous and new asynchronous data access modes now support automated adaptive data recovery feature. If one or more RAID components contain bad blocks software may read only good data and adjust on-the-fly data access strategy to reconstruct missing information using redundancy. This function supports major redundancy methods, including mirroring, parity and Reed-Solomon code.

More RAID modes
The software now natively supports more possible RAID configurations (mainly related to RAID 6 and "vertical" data distributions: RAID 3/4, RAID 6/Vertical XOR etc.). New configurations support faster operation and adaptive recovery. Introduced RAID 1 support allows to use its redundancy to override bad blocks or even run it in asynchronous mode at same speeds as fast asynchronous RAID 0 by applying adaptive re-striping.

Full disk encryption support
Professional Recovery software edition now gets decryption module with support of major types of full-disk encryption algorithms and methods (such AES/AES256 with CBC and different Initialization Vector modes, including null, plain, ESSIV etc.). In case encryption key is known or can be recovered, software will be able to decrypt the volume (including RAID volumes) on-the-fly and thus access the data or recover lost or deleted files.
Decryption module is compatible to Linux device mapper encryption module (dm-crypt) and can be used with encrypted storages (including NAS storages) if encryption key is known.