UFS

UFS
Austin Ticknor
University of Advancing Technology

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Basically, there is a file system called UFS otherwise known as

the Unix File System. This file system is used mainly by the Unix
operating system and many Unix-like operating systems such as Linux.
The main design for a UFS file system is in a volume format. In
volume format, the UFS file system is composed of several parts. The
following parts are included in the UFS volume. First, a few blocks
towards the beginning of the partition are reserved for boot blocks.
Then, there is a superblock, which contains a magic number for
identifying itself as a UFS file system.
Most importantly, there is a collection of cylinder groups. Each of
which has one of a few components such as a backup copy of the
super block, a cylinder group feature set similar to those in the
superblock, a few inodes that each contain file attributes, and finally a
number of data nodes.
Many Unix systems have adopted UFS. Most of which have added
their own proprietary extensions that might not always be recognized
by other Unix Versions. One well-known version of Unix known as Linux
has been given UFS implementation for binary compatibility at the
same read level with other Unix systems. However, there is no
standard implementation for the extensions to UFS. Therefore, Linux
does not have full support for writing to UFS.
Some other systems that use a varient of UFS include NeXTStep,
which is BSD-derived. UFS was also made available in the MAC OS X

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operating system as an alternative to HFS+. Sadly though, this is no

longer possible due to Macs implementation of Mac OS Leopard. In
fact, as of Mac OS Lion, UFS support by Apple was completely dropped.
Now we move on to a tool that specializes in analyzing images of
the UFS format. This tool is known as Kernel. It specializes not Just with
UFS, but nearly all forms of Unix. It can be possible for this tool to
extend to Linux depending of if the version of Linux has the UFS file
system running on the operating system.
Some of the features that come with the tool include support for
various types of Unix file systems. Which, again, can be stretched to
include Linux as well. But thats not all. Other features include
complete Unix data recovery from the hard disk, scanning and
extracting all Unix data for analysis in other tools, and the tool can
completely restore Unix data with a complete hierarchy of the file
structure.The tool further states via the features section that besides
UFS, some other Unix based file systems that are compatible for the
tool include HTFS and EAFS.
The tool contains 11 different categories of material recovery
from UFS volumes. Such categories include password recovery, email
recovery, data security software, data recovery software, PDF tools,
backup recovery software, Outlook tools monitoring software, database
recovery software, email migration software, and finally MS Office

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Repair Software. Even corrupt files can be recovered and restored

when an extensive scan is done to the file system.
The bottom line is that this tool is as well performing and
perfectly capable as some other well-known tools such as FTK imager,
EnCase, and Autopsy. When used, it can be a single most important
factor in discovering evidence of a crime on a piece of Unix based
hardware or software. It can even be a match for malware and virus
infected files which will not affect the tool from doing its primary
function.

Source Page:

Data Recovery Software, File Repair Software, Email Recovery &

Migration Software. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2015, from
http://www.kerneldatarecovery.com/