Software interface and functions

UFS Explorer automatically detects and presents all devices attached to the local computer in the left pane. You can click on any device in the list to see its properties, like type, name, capacity and others. If the physical drive is divided into several logical partitions, the software displays these partitions under the drive with the information about the applied file system and its accessibility (if available). You can click on the partition to see the rest of its properties. Choose the partition matching your criteria to start the scanning operation. It is also possible to scan the whole drive if you cannot find the partition with your lost data or it looks damaged.

Virtually assembled complex RAID-based storages and composite volumes can be recognized by special icons while their constituents will be also listed separately as stand-alone drives. Certain specific storage technologies may also be marked with special labels.

The color of a partition tells about the result of the basic test of its file system. A green partition is most likely to be intact, a yellow one may have certain issues while a red one is most probably was seriously damaged.

Please refresh the list of connected storages to let the UFS Explorer update the information about the newly connected devices. If the program doesn’t detect a hard disk drive, see to it that the device is properly attached to the computer: check the data connector and the power supply cable, ensure that they are connected firmly to the hard drive and have no breaks. In case of a USB-drive, try using a neighboring USB slot. Also, make sure that the drive is recognized in BIOS and the driver software is properly installed for the disk device/adapter.

If everything is intact except for the disk, there may be issues with the storage itself and you should contact a reliable data recovery center.

The issue may be caused by the storage connector. The bridge chip of the adapter may be incapable of transferring data located at large addresses because of its data transmission ability. That is why disk sizes displayed in UFS Explorer can differ from the real ones. The same problem may also arise with internal drives in case of a poor bandwidth of an old motherboard.

Use the "Open" tool from the main menu to mount the disk image in the list of connected storages. After that, the opened disk image file can be processed in the software like any conventional storage device.

In most cases, you should keep the default parameters chosen by the software. Alternatively, you can adjust the procedure in accordance with your requirements. At the first step, select the preferred type of scan: a quick scan of the existing file system, a quick scan of the file system combined with a scan of the unused space, a full scan of the specified region ignoring file system structures, a scan of the occupied file system space according to its metadata or a scan of the space which is not used by the file system. At the second step, select the file system types you believe can be applied on the storage and if required, modify the encoding settings. After that, decide whether you need the results of a scan by known content and if necessary, load the custom IntelliRAW rules. Once the most optimal parameters are selected, you can start the scanning process.

The scan result saved in the course or right after the procedure is a file that contains the information about the structures on storage. It can be loaded to save time in case the storage is to be processed once again after the program is restarted. However, to recover the actual data, the storage itself or its disk image is required anyway.

In most cases, UFS Explorer recreates the initial structure of the file system on the data source. As a rule, you can easily find the needed files in their native folders, just like you do in a standard file browser, and preview the files whose formats are supported by the internal viewer. Another way to locate the required files is to use a quick search box: Enter the name of the file or its extension into the search bar and press the "Search" button. There is also an advanced search function that includes filters for a file name, size and modification date. The program will find the requested files and sort them into specially created folders.

However, please note that a failed attempt to find a file by its name or in its native folder doesn’t always mean that its content hasn’t been recovered. If for some reason the native folder cannot be restored, the software may place the files into the "$LostFiles", "Found files" and "Extra found files" folders. Also, numbers may be assigned to files the names of which were irreversibly lost.

If files cannot be found at their initial locations, please examine the "$LostFiles", "Found files" and "Extra found files" folders. Also, you may use the embedded viewer to check the content of unfamiliar files.

UFS Explorer allows copying the recovered data to any device accessible by your operating system. You may enter the path for the target folder manually or browse to its location using a tree view of the directories structure. Saving the data to a network storage is also possible, yet, it may require additional preparation steps.

Please note that saving the data back to the source storage leads to its overwriting and thus permanent loss, so it is critically important to use another storage for this purpose.

A network drive may not be included in the list of devices available for saving the recovered data. To be able to use such a storage as a target one, please, perform the steps described in usage of a network storage for saving the recovered data.