Data Access with UFS Explorer

Concepts

UFS Explorer works as browser, simalar to Windows Explorer. However, unlike Windows and Windows explorer, UFS Explorer does not use Windows-style disk partitions layout and Windows files access; instead it reads information directly from disk. That's why it can read files from other file systems, that are normally not available. The following data-related concepts are used:

• Disks - any storage devices, that is readable from Windows. Among all, they are:
  
  
  • Windows Physical Disks - any disk that is accessible through Windows volume manager. May have no, one or more then one Windows drive letters. This includes, but not limited to: PATA/SATA/SCSI Hard Disks, USB storage devices, digital devices (like MP3 players, digital cameras etc.);
  • Image files - any plain, uncompressed disk or partition image file, including UFS Explorer compressed disk images;
  • Virtual disks - virtual disk files of VMWare, VirtualPC and Parallels Workstation virtualization software;
  • Virtual storages - disks, virtually created with UFS Explorer recovery tools, basing on existing disks and disk images.
  
  
• Partitions - logically delimited parts of Disks, containing file systems and actual data. UFS Explorer supports many styles of such partitioning and in most cases is able to detect disk partitions automatically.
  
  
• File systems - structured data storage, containing files, folders and technical information. Located on one or more Partitions. UFS Explorer automatically detects file systems on each Partition. NTFS and FAT file systems may correspond to 'drive letters' under Windows.
  
  
• Files, Folders - usual mean of data organization objects.
  
  

Representation in UFS Explorer

UFS Explorer shows all disks in left panel. The view contains disks themselves and hierarchical structure of partitions on it (tree). Unlike Windows/Linux linear partitions numbering it represent how partitions are located on disk.


Figure 1 shows three disk objects: Physical Disk and two disk images. All disk objects are located under 'Computer' object. Each disk contains set of partitions. The sub-partitions under Extented/Extended LBA (DOS) partitions are shown under them in interface (as well as underlying UFS partitions on BSD Slice or Ext2/3 partitions on Linux LVM).
This tree just represents actual disk parts hierarchy on the disk. Grey icons represent unsupported, unknown partitions or partitions with no file system. Colored icons show partitions that may contain valid file system.

Physical disks

UFS Explorer detects all physical disks automatically on program start. It detects partition table automatically and shows all the disks at left panel. In case you have removable devices with no media loaded (like flash card reader devices), they could have disk drive letters under Windows, but will not appear in UFS Explorer: it shows only actual, attached storage devices.
If you connected/disconnected any removable disk drive after UFS Explorer is started, you may use 'Re-scan for hardware storages presence' command (available from 'Computer' context menu) to refresh actual hardware changes in UFS Explorer. Drive re-connection also requires this re-scan to validate opened disk devices.

Disk images and virtual disks

To access the data on virtual disks or disk images you should open this file. Click 'Open disk' icon or use 'File'->'Open virtual disk or disk image' command from main menu. Choose a file and open it. UFS Explorer will detect disk image or virtual disk file type and will read partitions table automatically. Then it will add it to left panel. From this moment, there are no differences between physical disk or disk image/virtual disk (all the same operations are available for both).

Actual files access

Partitions tree shows disks structure, but not actual data on disk. To see the actual data - just double-click the disk partition, containing valid file system. There are also few exceptions:

• File system not detected: the file system could be distributed among several disks or disk partitions. You should assemble valid RAID storage;
• Partition offset is wrong: the situation often occurs in NAS (Intel, LaCie etc.); you should adjust actual partition start;
• Unsupported method of partitioning: UFS Explorer might be unable to detect actual partitions so will show only one 'unknown' partition.

To solve issues 1 or 3 - there are Partition detection tool, designed to find any file system, ignoring disk partition tables.

After file system is detected, double click partition to open its root directory in right panel.


Figure 2 shows opened file system on right panel. 'Path' bar indicates current path and has Linux/Unix-like format ('/' - root, '/pgms' - folder 'pgms' in root, '/pgms/GIMP-2.0' - subfolder 'GIMP-2.0' within 'pgms'). Note: 'Path' contains no drive letter even for FAT/NTFS file systems and shows relative path from file system root. This path could be used for file system navigation and is case sensitive to satifsy POSIX requirements to file names.
The file system navigation works in usual Windows Explorer style (e.g. double-click file or folder to open).
Double-click on file copies file to Windows temporary folder and opens it with default program, associated with file extension.
To copy file, folder or files/folders group to any specific location of 'local' file system, select the objects and click 'Copy to...' icon or use 'Copy to...' tool from context menu.

---

See also: Detecting lost partitions, Disk Imaging, Help topics.