Disk analysis, maintenance and recovery utility
FDISK - PTEDIT - RECOVERY - UNDELETE -
IMAGING - CLONING - MOVE - RESIZE
DFSee is a generic disk, partition and filesystem utility for maintenance and
data-recovery. It supports partition tables (FDISK, LVM), FAT, FAT32, HPFS,
NTFS, JFS and, to some extent, EXT2/3 or REISER filesystems too.
OS2/eCS, DOS, Windows-NT/2000/XP, and LINUX version in a single package!
DFSee can be used in one of several ways:
- As a replacement for the classic FDISK and LVM programs
DFSee is a complete replacement for the partitioning tools as found with
DOS, OS/2, Win9x, Windows-NT/2000/XP and Linux.
It is also a replacement for the LVM utility that comes with eComStation,
and all OS/2 versions 4.50 or newer. Only creation of 'LVM' type volumes as
used with JFS and partition-spanning is not supported yet.
Apart from the standard create/delete type of functions there are a lot of
special commands to display information and fix all kinds of problems
related to partition-tables and LVM information. A fully interactive
partition-table editor is included as well (PTEdit).
Finally, this FDISK capability is being used by large organisations for
automatic (and unattended) roll-out scenarios.
- To recover from partition problems and disasters
An often used function here is the DFSDISK script that automates the
collection of needed information to 'UNDO' an accidental FDISK operation or
other partitioning related disaster. Another important feature is the
ability to save and restore ALL partitioning information in a regular file
that you can keep as a backup on a diskette so recovery operations will be
MUCH easier.
- As a tool to copy whole disks or partitions
Two main functiones are available:
IMAGING |
Whole disks, partitions or parts of partition can be saved to an
imagefile, either RAW or in a compressed format. The imagefiles can
be restored to the same or a different location resulting in backup
or copy functionality.
For large images, and using removable media to store them, it is
possible to limit the size of the generated files and create
multiple numbered files for one image. For direct writing to
removable media like diskettes, CDR or DVD-R (streaming) it will
prompt for media-change too. |
CLONING |
Cloning can make an exact copy of (part of) a partition or disk
to another area on the same or another disk. This can be used as a
very fast backup facility (speeds of 30 Mb/sec are not uncommon) and
to move partitions arround. Check the CLONE, MOVE and COPY commands
and menu-items ...
On the bootable CD, the bootimage uses an Ultra-DMA driver to
allow maximum speeds on modern ultra-DMA IDE disks. |
These DFSee functions are comparable to programs like Norton GHOST and
PowerQuest DriveImage
- As a tool to 'UNDELETE' files that have been accidentaly deleted.
This feature is implemented for HPFS and NTFS only, but on those
filesystems it is a very powerfull tool. It works by finding all deleted
files (DELFIND), and then letting the user make a selection based on a
wild-card filespecification and a recoverability outlook percentage
(DELSHOW). The actual recover operation will copy the matching files to a
specified directory, if possible on another disk (RECOVER).
- As an analysis and recovery tool for most used filesystems.
This includes boot-sectors, superblocks and low-level directory
structures. For most supported filesystems some specific commands are
available that fix common problems with that filesystem.
To support a large number of possible filesystems, DFSee uses specific modes
of operation. Every mode has its own set of of dedicated commands and
recognized data formats (sector types). Generic commands (and sector types)
are available in all modes. On selecting a data-source (disk, partition,
volume) DFSee will try to recognize the involved filesystem and activate
support for it automatically.
The most important modes are:
FDISK |
for partitioning work, default active at startup
|
HPFS |
native filesystem on OS/2, eComStation, WSeB ...
|
FAT |
classic PC filesystems including FAT32 and VFAT
|
NTFS |
native filesystem on Windows-NT -2000 or -XP
|
JFS |
journaled filesystem on OS/2, eCS or WSeB
|
EXT2/3 |
native filesystem on Linux, EXT3 is journaled
|
REISER |
journaled filesystem on Linux by Hans Reiser
|
AUX |
Auxilary mode for unrecognized data
|
Commands specific to a mode are available in that mode only, except for
the FDISK commands that are available all the time just as all the generic
commands are.
- As a simple but powerfull binary (or HEX) display and edit tool.
DFSee can access data on hard-disks, operating-system volumes like
diskettes or CDROM and (image) files.
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