Why UFS Explorer is the best data recovery software for advanced users

01.08.2022

Apparently, the search for a decent software instrument regularly gives a pretty hard time to data recovery engineers and other proficient computer users who for whatever reason are up against the loss of critical files. At first glance, there are far too many products designed to restore the missing information, but in practice, most of them appear to be oriented towards a common Windows user who accidentally deleted a couple of folders or formatted a USB stick and simply wants the data back without pressing any extra buttons. Professional versions may provide some additional options or even the support of RAID, but this is usually far from enough for tech-savvy people whose requirements are above and beyond the average. Technical experts often have to work with severely corrupted storages, with a broad range of devices implementing various file systems and technologies, process massive amounts of data and do that as speedy as possible. Such needs can be satisfied only by highly configurable professional-level software like UFS Explorer which opens up almost endless logical data recovery possibilities. Let’s take a closer at the peculiarities of this product which make it stand out from a multitude of other tools.

The software product is represented by four separate editions: Standard, RAID, Network RAID and Professional. They vary in terms of additional supported technologies, extra features and configurations, but it should be mentioned that such a distinction is neither related to any limitations as to the amount of recovered data which can be saved nor to the actual quality of the result. Each of the applications has also three installation options – for Microsoft Windows, for macOS and for Linux. It is worthy of note that the version of the program restricts only the use of the software on a computer running a certain OS but in no way limits its data recovery capabilities, as all the of the versions share the same list of supported file systems. Among other aspects one can also point out:

Convenient navigation through storages

The software instantly detects all the attached storage devices and displays them in the list of storages together with all possible properties, which makes it exceptionally easy to find the needed digital medium, especially when there are too many of them connected. Logical volumes are listed right under the corresponding drives so there should be no problem in identifying those. Some storage types, like RAID, even have their special icons for easier recognition. Comprehensive information about each of the volumes is provided as well, which includes the size, location, presence of additional technologies, file system and its state.

Handling corrupted volumes

In contrast to many existing utilities, UFS Explorer allows working with both physical devices and logical volumes. Even if a volume cannot be mounted in the operating system due to severe damage to its logical structure, the software is likely to recognize it and let the user to scan the whole disk and extract the lost data. Moreover, the software offers means for finding and reconstructing lost partitions, either by automatic search using metadata or inspecting the storage range manually specified by the user.

Direct access to the content of a storage

Unlike most of the available data recovery tools, UFS Explorer enables the user to open the storage right away and see its content prior to performing a scan. In some cases, this may be even enough to retrieve the needed files, when they were not deleted or formatted and simply cannot be accessed due to incompatibility or other storage issues.

Support of a wide range of file systems

UFS Explorer supports very many file systems of Windows, Linux, macOS, so, in addition to the “standard” for most utilities FAT32, NTFS, HFS+ and Ext2-Ext4, allows working with less common types, like Microsoft ReFS/ReFS3, Apple APFS, Linux XFS, JFS, UFS, ZFS and even Btrfs, which makes it possible to apply the software to practically any storage, from a simple memory card to a complex server station.

Broad coverage of various storage technologies

Along with automatic recognition of RAID parameters and reconstruction of an array, UFS Explorer provides a versatile RAID Builder mechanism with an embedded script handler, which provides for the manual assembly of a RAID set of any complexity and with any settings imaginable. Furthermore, the software is able to work with a tremendous diversity of specific storage technologies, like Storage Spaces and Dynamic Disks of Windows, deduplicated NTFS and ReFS volumes, simple and thin-provisioned LVM volumes of Linux, Apple’s Fusion Drive and Core Storage, Drobo’s Beyond RAID, Synology’s Hybrid RAID and RAID-Z of ZFS, while virtual disks of VMware, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, QEMU, XEN, Paralles and other virtual storages are handled by UFS Explorer as efficiently as physical ones. Beyond that, the software possesses integrated decryption algorithms for different encryption technologies, like BitLocker, LUKS, File Vault 2 and APFS encryption and thus is capable of opening and processing encrypted volumes directly, without their prior decryption in the operating system. Also, SCSI and SAS drives with a non-standard size of sectors (520 bytes, 524 bytes, 528 bytes, etc.) can be operated by UFS Explorer without specialized hardware.

Instruments for work with defective disks

UFS Explorer offers an excellent set of tools for work with drives which contain bad sectors. The software provides means for creating a complete or partial image of a disk and is able to work with such images in the same way as with any physical storage. Drives connected to a DeepSpar Disk Imager device can be handled by UFS Explorer directly over LAN, without any additional utilities. Also, the software allows utilizing bad sector maps produced by different third-party solutions, like АСЕ Lab PC-3000, ACE Data Recovery MHZ and DeepSpar DDI.

Highly adjustable scanning procedure

Before starting the process of scanning the user can specify the storage region to be analyzed, file systems types to be found, modify encoding parameters for file names, opt between quick or deep scan and even add custom rules for any specific file type. The procedure can be paused and resumed any time, while its results can be saved and processed at any moment later.

Conveniently presented scan results

In most cases, the software reconstructs the directory structure of the storage and provides all the files with their original names. The user can sort the found files by their names, date, type and size or apply various search filters, for example, include or exclude all files with a given sequence of characters in the name, filter files by size or even by the date of last modification. Certain file types, like images, texts, documents or videos can be previewed as thumbnails and opened in the embedded viewer, while other ones are represented by their hexadecimal content. The user is free to save all the recovered items at once or decide to choose only the necessary folders or files.

Useful tools for work with hexadecimal content

UFS Explorer makes it easy to analyze hexadecimal content of a storage and correct logical errors directly on disks or disk images. One can compare the raw data of several drives, perform parallel search, calculate parity or combine several disk images into a single storage. It is also possible to overwrite the content using raw data in the clipboard or parse the clipboard content as hexadecimal text. In addition, there are instruments for filling in data ranges or making more complex byte transformations.

As you can see, the capabilities of UFS Explorer go above and beyond ones of most existing data recovery tools which makes it downright the best software for demanding advanced users.