Recovering from a RAID Controller Failure

There are many reasons why a RAID goes down.  A technician will normally assume that one or more of the drives have failed.  This is a common diagnosis as the diagnostic lights on each of the drives may be blinking, the lights may have gone amber, or... 

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RAID 5 Stale drive detection

Over the course of a week I receive several calls regarding the recovery of a RAID 5 array. In the course of the initial interrogation of a client I ask several questions regarding the state of the array, what has been done to recover the array and most... 

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Network Attached Storage NAS and Other Nightmares

Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices have been a boon for storage technology.  What a great windfall for the industry.  Grab yourself an Open Source operating system, stick it on a prom, get yourself an inexpensive motherboard, some hard drives and... 

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Recovering a badly fragmented Outlook PST file after a few rounds with chkdsk The Final Installment

Welcome back!  As before, we still have the problem where chkdsk was run on a RAID with a stale drive.  We have had a brief explanation of how NTFS 5 works and how the data is stored on the volume.  Lets take a much more detailed look as to how the... 

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Speed Clone For Windows Released

DTI Data Recovery continues its excellence in software development by releasing Speed Clone for Windows. The new Speed Clone download package includes the Windows version as well as a bootable DOS ISO for cloning hard drives that are registered in the... 

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Windows Surface Scanner Freeware Utility

Several times a week DTI Data receives calls from clients describing a situation where their computer seems to ‘freeze’ or ‘lock-up’ on boot up.   No matter what they try the system will no longer boot and they receive a Blue Screen of Death... 

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A Recovery Solution from the NTFS File System

I started programming almost thirty years ago.  I cut my teeth on the ATARI 400 and stayed in that venue for almost two years.  After awhile though, I came to realize that although the ATARI and its design were simple and powerful, if I were to make... 

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NTFS File System and PST File Data Recovery

As discussed in the previous articles we have a RAID that had some problems.  These problems were exacerbated by the fact that a chkdsk was run on the file system and changed some of the attributes of the PST file we are trying to recover.  Normally... 

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Chkdsk is Not Designed For Data Recovery

In the previous two articles we have discussed how the RAID and some of the decisions the client made in trying to recover the RAID affected the PST file.  In addition I discussed that there may have been a stale drive in the array and which probably... 

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Outlook PST Data Recovery

Last time I gave a brief description of a RAID that we received here at the shop.  I also shared some of the things the client had done to try and get their RAID back online. I also explained that chkdsk had been run. What made this RAID unusual was... 

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Recovering Fragmented Outlook PST After Running chkdsk

The following saga is the story of the recovery of a single Outlook PST (Personal Information Store) file.  It was accomplished using a simple hex editor some diagnostics, and the courage of  David when he slew the Philistine Goliath.  Well, maybe... 

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Converting RAID 1 to Single Drive

RAID 1, also known as a mirrored set, would seem to be a perfect way to keep your critical data safe. The concept being that you have redundant drives. Whatever gets written to one drive will get written to the other drive. In other words, the drives... 

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End User Raid Zero Array Crash

I had a client call me the other day and tell me that her two year old two terabyte drive had crashed and all of her pictures of her children, as well as her wedding were on the drive. She did not have a backup and was very upset. I knew that there was... 

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View It Now Software Tool

I am a pretty visual guy and because of that my problem solving skills are based on viewing.  When trying to recover data from a corrupt file system I like to use a hex editor and view the system areas of the drive to make sure that everything is intact. ... 

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View It Now NTFS File System Viewer

I have worked with Microsoft file systems since DOS 3.3.  From FAT12, to the current NTFS 5.0 Microsoft has always strived to make their file systems fast and reliable.  However, there has always been one major drawback.  Their file systems have always... 

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Hard Drive Recovery and Remote Diagnostics… Old School gone retro…

When I first started writing hard drive recovery software, many, many, years ago Microsoft file systems were pretty straight forward.  It was a simple FAT, with some file entry tables scattered throughout the drive with a few key system components.  ... 

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View It Now for SNAP OS 4.X

The original SNAP NAS devices were developed by SNAP Appliance.  The operating system that was used was a flavor of BSD in concert with the file system UFS.  Although the file system looks very similar to the original UFS there were some subtle changes... 

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Recovering Folder Relationships Using DOS Clustering Design

    In my last installment I described what a file entry record would look like if it were in fact a cluster holding file entry data. I went over the fact that the first two entries of the folder cluster would be a period followed by ten spaces, and... 

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Using FAT32 File Entry Record For Recovering Folders Using Software Logic

  In my last installment I described the file entry record and its on-disk format.  I used a ‘C’ structure to denote the different fields of the record and defined which five are most important to us when trying to recover a FAT32 file... 

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FAT32 Recover File Entry Table On-Disk Layout Using a C Structure

In my last installment Recovering FAT 32 With File System Markers, I offered a brief outline of a case that destroyed a FAT32 file systems major components. This was done by formatting the drive using an operating system that is not native to the file... 

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