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Tips and HOWTO |
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No doubt using DFSee from a bootable CDROM solves a few problems in case of disk problems.
Using it however, also introduces a few potential problems:
This is a problem for actions that want to write files into this current directory like:
The easiest way to get arround the problem is to change the current directory to a location where files can be written. This can be done from the DFSee commandline using the CD command, or from the menu using:
Note that other things like creating imagefiles or exporting the sectorlist will present a File-SaveAs dialog by default, so the current directory is of less concern. It is important of course, to select a directory that can be written to.
Because of this, the first or only diskette drive is accessible as B:, or not at all if two physical diskette drives are present. Note that the A: driveletter that will appear in the file-dialogs really represents the CDROM bootimage and can NOT be used to save files!
Another problem related to this diskette emulation mode is that it might not work on some (SCSI) systems because of subtle differences in the implementation of the El-Torrito standard used. When that happens, the symtoms might be anything from a hang during booting to simply booting from the harddisk ...
Do note that for the floppy-emulation to work, diskette-support MUST be enabled in the BIOS. So if you have a laptop without a diskette, do NOT turn that BIOS support off or the CDROM will not boot either!
While all DFSee versions share the same set of commands and menu options, and in general can perform the same actions, using a DOS environment does place some restrictions:
Note that some USB attached disks ARE now supported with DFSee since it includes a DOS-based USB driver. However, that does not work with every kind of PC USB-hardware and not with every USB disk device either ...
INT13 is a standard for low-level disk-services available at PC-startup time
(and later when running DOS).
They can reside in the system-BIOS, an additional SCSI on-board BIOS,
an on-board BIOS of other disk controllers or in software modules (disk-drivers)
that load as part of the operating system.
The original implementation of INT13 services have been limited to the
first 1024 cylinders of disk space (typically 7.8 GiB), but later implementations
called 'Extended INT13' have lifted that limitation.
Note that using a bootable USB stick like
DFSPUPPY is often more convenient and faster!
The other extreme, the classic interface used before the GUI's is the commandline interface, with the screen displaying text output by the program and the keyboard used to enter commands. This requires the users to know or learn quite a lot about the program to be able to use all available functionality.
Since it is very hard to use a GUI program from a minimal system like a boot-diskette, DFSee is not using any GUI at all, instead it uses a compromise, where windows, menus, help-screens and dialogs are used but the interface is not graphical, it is still implemented as TEXT-mode.
It its current release DFSee does use a mouse to navigate its user interface,
however, the mouse is only supported in the DOS, Windows and OS/2 versions.
When running under a GUI (text-window) like OS/2 or Windows you can use
additional mouse functionality like the clipboard, when and where supplied by the OS.
| Enter | when just menu-headings are visible, will open the highlighted pulldown menu |
| Enter | when a pulldown is open, will activate or execute the highlighted menu item |
| Esc | when just menu-headings are visible, will close the menu and activate the commandline |
| Esc | when a pulldown is open, will close the pulldown |
| F10 | when the menu is active, will close the menu and activate the commandline |
| F10 | when the commandline is active, will activate the menu and open the default pulldown |
| Right arrow | when a submenu-item is highlighted in a pulldown, will open that submenu |
| Right arrow | when no submenu-item is highlighted in a pulldown, will move to the next pulldown |
| Left arrow | when a submenu is opened, will close that submenu |
| Left arrow | when no submenu is opened, will move to the previous pulldown |
| Down arrow | will move the highlight to the previous menu-item in the pulldown, and wrap arround |
| Up arrow | will move the highlight to the next menu-item in the pulldown, and wrap arround at the top |
When only the menu-headings are visible, the first letter of each heading can be used as a quick-select key to open that menu-heading. Almost any other key used will open the highlighted heading. When the commandline is active the command menu x will activate the menu and open the heading with quick-select letter x.
When a pulldown menu is open, the letters that are highlighted (yellow) can be used as a quick-select key to activate (execute) that specific menu-item.
All information in the menu and help-system has also been extracted into an online version, including hundreds of screenshots. You can use that to get familiar with the many functions in DFSee.
The menu behaviour can be adapted to personal taste using switches on DFSee startup:
| DFSxxx -menu- | Do not activate the menu on startup, and do not automatically re-activate it after executing a menu selection |
| DFSxxx -M:1 | Do not open submenu when using right-arrow , instead the Enter key is required to open the submenu |
| DFSxxx -M:2 | Do not automatically open pulldown menus , instead an explicit key-press is required to open the pulldown |
| DFSxxx -M:3 | Combination of -M:1 and -M:2 |
In the above DFSxxx stands for any of of the available DFSee executables for OS/2, DOS, Windows, Linux, or OSX on the MAC.
The DFSFAST procedure collects information on all the existing
partitions on one or more disks in the system into several result files.
The DFSDISK procedure goes one step further and also does an extensive search
of the disk(s) for any remaining partition-tables, bootsectors or
LVM related sectors. Again, the results of this search is stored in several files
for every disk examined.
The DFSFAST or DFSDISK result files are the basis for an analysis that may result
in the cration of a recovery script (.DFS) that will recreate the
missing or damaged partitions, and/or fix any other problems found.
Because of the complexity of the matter, and the many variations
is disk layout and filesystems, the analysis is NOT automatic and
requires someone knowledgable about disks, partitions and the
problems that may occur with them.
It is usually done by DFSee SUPPORT, and in that case
does require a valid registration, and in repeat or more
complex cases an additional support fee.
See DFSee support for details.
For the 'Full' procedure (DFSDISK) you can supply several search options in the
presented dialog. Normally the defaults specified are sufficient,
however, in case nothing was found due to geometry problems, you could
change the search from 'Search cylinder boundaries'
to 'Search ALL sectors (slow!)'.
But be prepared for a LONG wait for the results, it is real slow ...
DFSxxx.exe run recover.dfs
You will most likely need assistance to do analyse the information,
and that DOES require you to have or buy
a registration, and in some cases pay an additional support fee!
If you have the wanted information collected in the files, you
can send them to DFSee SUPPORT at: support@dfsee.com
To save space, I advice to compress all the files before sending them.
If you want to attempt the analysis yourself, or simply want to learn more about
the matter you can also check the
DFSee DFSDISK descriptions and usage
When using the menu, the CREATE selection opens a submenu with all available freespace areas.
Only freespace areas that are large enough, and in a proper location to contain new partitions will be selectable. Freespace areas might not be selectable when:
Select the one you want to use for the new partition, and on ENTER you will be presented with a CREATE specific dialog that allows you to specify all relevant information.
The CREATE dialog allows you to specify:
For recovery purposes however, you do NOT want the bootsector to be cleared!
By selecting a partition, and starting the DFSee BROWSER (
In this video you can see several files being recovered from an NTFS filesystem,
using the OS/2 version of DFSee. OS/2 does NOT have a working NTFS filesystem driver!
Find your deleted file(s) on an HPFS/NTFS/JFS/FAT partition, or find regular files
on an HPFS/NTFS/JFS/EXTn/FAT partition that has become inaccessible for the operating system.
(no driveletter assigned, not 'mounted'), or that has been formatted or damaged somehow.
Recover the file-data for all or selected files to another volume (driveletter).
Manual file-recovery (or undelete) in DFSee is done in several steps:
Depending on the current filesystem xxx you can specify part
of the name for the file(s) to be found in the next dialog.
While searching, a reference will be added to the DFSee sector-list for every
file found that matches this partial filename and the full path+filename for
the file will be displayed together with a recovery prognosis.
Note that searching for files on a large disk, may take a very long time.
Expect between less than 1 to more than 10 minutes per gigabyte, depending
on the speed of your harddisk, the filesystem used and the amount of freespace.
For JFS, remember to rebuild the SLT after importing the list,
otherwise the path+filename info is not there resulting in rather cryptic filenames
generated out of the INODE sectornumbers.
This optional step might be useful to find out what the best wildcard is to
get exactly the file(s) you need to recover. The wildcard may describe any part
of the full path+filename displayed while searching, and it can contain multiple
wildcard-characters:
As an example: *mydocs*test?.doc
would display/recover all .DOC files with a name starting with
test plus just one character
that have mydocs somewhere in the directory path.
This will first present a dialog where you need to specify the directory where
the filedata will be recovered to. Of course this must be a writable location with
enough freespace to hold the filedata for all files to be recovered.
In this destination directory, the files will be recreated with their full
original path and filename when available, and the data for the file is copied over.
After specifying the destination directory, the next dialog allows you to specify a
selection wildcard, exactly as with the optional display step described above.
After this the files will be recovered one by one, with progress information displayed.
For later reference and checking the results, it is advised to start a logfile
before starting the recovery procedure.
Notes specific to certain filesystems:
It is important to add a additional step and that is to build the so-called sector-lookup-table
(SLT) which will itterate over all directories and add that knowledge (path+filename) and
makes it available for 'list' and 'recovery'.
To make thing easier, the 'search' menu-items in the JFS recovery menu
automatically start the SLT-build for you.
Imagefiles are (binary) files that hold a complete representation of a disk-partition or even a complete disk.
Their use is in backup, system recovery and moving contents from one system to another.
In DFSee there are two main types of imagefiles:
These are the kind of images that may be shared with other applications since
it is a defacto standard. It is used a lot with diskette images, but also
by Virtual-machine implementations like VPC or SVISTA as far as uncompressed
disk images are used to represent the hard-disk of the virtual PC.
Note: When you suspect that a filesystem could be DAMAGED, do NOT use
the 'smart' option for imaging or cloning since the allocation information
that is used for that may not be reliable! Use regular compression instead.
There are other properties that are useful
with Compressed images mainly but, except for the header-info, work for RAW as well:
Note that DFSee compressed images are NOT ZIP-files! First of all, they use a slightly
different compression method, and second it is not a 'file-archive' with a directory
like regular ZIP-files are.
Note that to write to multiple CD-R/RWs using DFSee, your CD-writer software
must support Streaming write mode, where the CD-R/RW gets a diveletter
assigned that can be written to just like any other drive.
For the other options use the '-?' help option on IMAGE and RESTORE
The restore logic will automatically handle compression, multiple files
SmartUse and media-change where needed.
This will result in an exact sector-by-sector copy called a CLONE.
Another purpose would be cloning a DAMAGED disk (bad sectors) to
try and get as much data off it ass possible. To do this, make sure
you check the "From damaged" option in the dialog, to optimize
the cloning process for this purpose.
Some of the options available are:
Note that the CLONE operation supports overlapping TO and FROM areas,
so it is possible to move data WITHIN a partition or other object.
You can MOVE or COPY partitions from the DFSee commandline using the MOVE command (and -c option),
see DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu using
one of following selections:
The actual copying or moving of the partition data will be done using a CLONE
command, and the required partitioning and LVM commands will be determined
and executed where needed.
RECOVER/UNDELETE files using manual commands
On several filesystems it is also possible to find and recover DELETED files,
but that requires some manual commands to find and select them since the BROWSER
will not show any deleted files. The same manual procedure can also be used to
recover normal files, which can be easier or faster if the files to be selected
are spread over many subdirectories and you only want to recover specific ones.
Since searching may be time-consuming, you can save the list (EXPORT) with
results to a file, so when you need to restart, or are interrupted somehow, you can simply
read it from the file again (IMPORT). There are menu items to do that in the Actions menu:
* representing one or more characters in the path+filename
? representing exactly one character in the path+filename
Undelete on FAT and FAT32 may work for very small files, but will be very unreliable.
Recovering normal (not deleted) files will work roughly the same for all mentioned filesystems.
Each component in the path and the filename will be limited
to a maximum of 15 characters due to the limited-length names as stored
in the file and directory FNODE structures.
The 'QuickFI' variants for searching are a LOT faster since they only search
the areas that are reserved for INODE storage.
On most NTFS filesystems, files to recover will be found within the first few
minutes of searching since it starts searching at the actual Master File Table (MFT).
You can abort further searching after a few minutes using the
IMAGING using RAW or compressed files
Create an imagefile from the currently selected object (disk/partition)
or restore an imagefile.
These are one-to-one exact sector copies of the original partition or disk
in a binary file. The data is NOT compressed or changed in any way and
nothing is added to the files for identification or other purposes.
The main difference with the RAW format is that they are well,
compressed meaning smaller ...
DFSee uses a mixture of LZW and RLE compression methods to achieve maximum compression
ratio and imaging speed for 'typical' situations. In addition it may use
SmartUse filesystem information to skip unused areas of partitions
when creating or restoring imagefiles. This results in tremendous savings in
filesize and processing-time for filesystems that have lots of unused (free) space.
Currently SmartUse imaging is implemented for
HPFS,
NTFS,
JFS,
FAT,
EXT2/3,
Reiser,
and HFS+ filesystems.
This adds a DFSee specific ASCII header to the imagefiles, that can be very useful
to identify the imagefile in question. You can view this info quite easily using
the standard 'TYPE filename' command on the operating system commandline
or a 'view' option as offered by many filemanagers.
Adding this header can be suppressed using the -Raw option on the IMAGE command.
This limits the maximum size of the imagefile(s) being created to the specified
size (or 2 GiB when not specified). This is useful to create files that will
fit on a diskette, a CD-R/RW or DVD or that are compatible with the maximum filesize
for the filesystem used to store the imagefiles.
This informs the DFSee imaging process that the files will be written to
removable media (like diskette or CD-R/RW) and that it should prompt the user
to change the media involved before starting each imagefile.
RSJ for OS/2 or Windows is such a product, and for Windows only you can use
Adaptec Easy CD creator or Roxio DirectCD (which should allow writing to DVD's too).
Selecting the object
Allthough you can use the "File -> Open object to work with" menu to open an object
and than create an image "from Current object", it is much more convenient to use
the available menu selections in the imaging submenu. That way all selections needed
to create the image are made from that single menu-selection plus a dialog:
For diskette-images you would use a Volume, in most other
situations you would use a Partition and in some rare cases you might want
images for a complete disk.
Creating an Image
You can create images from the DFSee commandline using the IMAGE command, see
DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu as shown above.
When using the menu, or when specifying an incomplete IMAGE command, you will be presented
with an imaging specific dialog that allows you to specify all relevant information.
Restoring an Image
You can restore images from the DFSee commandline using the RESTORE command, see
DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu using:
This will present you with a combined File-Open and options dialog where
you can select an imagefile to be restored as well as any specific options.
CLONE partitions or whole disks
Copy the contents of another disk/partition to the currently selected object
(disk/partition).
Selecting the object
You can use either the "File -> Open object to work with" menu to open an object
and than clone from another object "to Current object", or use the more specific
menu selections in the imaging submenu. Either way, most selections needed
are made from that single menu-selection plus a dialog:
This would be useful to make a copy of an existing disk to a new,
larger one without haveing to install everything again on the new disk.
Note that any partitions will be exact clones, NO resizing takes place.
This means the new disk, when larger, will leave you with a freespace
area at the end of the disk that you can use to create new partitions,
or to use with resizing and moving the existing partitions.
This is very useful to make a quick backup copy of partition
contents to an identical sized one, preferably on another disk.
Making a backup copy of your boot-partition(s) in a fully installed
and configured state, but clean of any garbage and viruses, allows
a very quick recovery in case a virus or other disaster hits.
Simply use the clone "partition to Partition" again to copy
the partition contents back ...
Performing the CLONE operation
You can clone objects from the DFSee commandline using the CLONE command, see
DFSee COMMAND overview, or from the menu as shown above.
When using the menu, or when specifying an incomplete CLONE command, you will be presented
with a cloning specific dialog that allows you to specify all relevant information.
This will COMPARE the sectors of the TO and FROM objects instead of copying them,
to allow a verification of a cloning operation, or simply to see if two objects
have exactly the same contents.
This will leave the original data on the destination object when read-errors
happen during cloning instead of filling them with a fixed 0xFE pattern.
This can be useful to clone damaged disks that have random failures in a few passes,
or to 'merge' a freshly formatted filesystem with a damaged one containing data.
This will reduce the buffersize during cloning to 1 sector, making the
operation MUCH slower but also reducing the number of sectors affected
by any read errors (bad sectors).
This will exclude the area at the end of (OS/2 style) LVM partitions that
holds the bad-block relocation and drive-linking information.
This can be useful in recovery situations, since after cloning that
information will be invalid and needs to be recreated anyway.
You can specify to start the clone at a specific sector instead of the
start of the object. Since you can specify the start for the TO and FROM
object seperately, you can use this to MOVE data within a partition
or relative to the start of the object.
This can limit the size to be copied to a value less that the whole object.
COPY or MOVE partitions
Moving or copying a partition deals with the partition contents as well as
the partition information (partition-tables and LVM), and is the easiest way
to do this. It 'adds' functionality to the basic CLONE command.
Create a copy of the currently selected partition in a freespace
area to be selected from a submenu-list.
Only freespace areas that are large enough to contain the copy will be selectable.
The size of the partition will stay exactly the same, there is NO automatic resize.
When applicable, LVM information will be created that is derived from the old
partition, with post-fixes to make the names and IDs unique.
Create a copy of the currently selected partition in a freespace
area to be selected from a submenu-list, and delete the original one.
Only freespace areas that are large enough to contain the partition will be selectable.
The size of the partition will stay exactly the same, there is NO automatic resize.
When applicable, LVM information will be moved with the partition.
This will MOVE the currently selected partition towards the end of the freespace
area that is directly after the partition. You can specify how far the
partition should be moved, with a maximum of the freespace size.
The result will be that some or all of the freespace will now
be IN FRONT of the partition.
This will MOVE the currently selected partition towards the begin of the freespace
area that is directly before the partition. You can specify how far the
partition should be moved, with a maximum of the freespace size.
The result will be that some or all of the freespace will now
be AFTER of the partition.
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(Tips and HOWTO page)
DFSee usage tips and HOWTO
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Created by Jan van Wijk: May 2005, last update: 2019-July-22
