RE: Digital Evidence Question - What is an effective Windows hard -disk search tool?

["Wilcox, Stephen" <StephenWilcox () universalcomputersys com>]

Do to the lack of knowledge and impatience I formatted the drive.  I now have looked at a couple recovery tools out 
there but they run around $75.. ouch.  I will bite the bullet and get one I guess.  Here is the question, once that the 
information is recover will the application be able to read the file again or does the file have to be reassembled by a 
third party?  I friend said that recovery is not a probable, reassembling the information in a order so the application 
can read it is another thing.  I have no idea on this, what is your thoughts?

Stephen

-----Original Message-----
From: Ansgar Wiechers [mailto:bugtraq () planetcobalt net]
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 6:50 PM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Digital Evidence Question - What is an effective Windows
hard -disk search tool?


On 2003-06-18 Gene LeDuc wrote:
> > It funny that this discussion started in the last few days..  As
> > Murphy would have it, last night while installing a new nic card.
> > Something happened to the boot.ini file and corrupted it. I don't
> > know how or why except the possibility of it writing to the boot.ini
> > file the nic information.  I don't think that this information is
> > stored in the boot.ini file but maybe.  Anyway the problem I ran into
> > is that the win would not load and I couldn't recover it.  (No safe
> > mode, no fixboot, no fixmbr, nothing)  I figured I would just overlay
> > an OS on top of the old one and then recover the information, no luck
> > the process would not perform unless I format.  Great...  If you know
> > what I mean.  I have been researching free tools to recover lost data
> > but no real luck in a software that performs properly.  I was
> > wondering if anyone has/knows of one.  Looking to recover my office
> > files - *.xls, *.pst file and *.doc files.
>
> If all you want to do is recover the info, you can attach the hard
> drive to a linux box and mount the NTFS partition.  From that point
> you can browse the NTFS file system and copy any files you want.
> Depending on the flavor and version of linux, you may have to load an
> NTFS driver; I believe sourceforge has a read-only driver.  If you
> don't have a linux box hanging around then I suppose you could also
> attach the drive to another MS box and access it natively.

Most distributions provide (read-only-)access to NTFS out of the box,
since it is part of the official kernel. The only exception I know of is
RedHat (you have to install the driver yourself there).
If you don't happen to have a Linux box you could try tomsrtbt [1] which
runs from a single floppy disk. With another harddisk in the box you can
easily copy the files you want to preserve onto the second harddisk. Use
FAT32 as filesystem for the second harddisk so it will be read- and
writable from Windows as well as from Linux.

[1] http://www.toms.net/rb/

Best regards
Ansgar Wiechers

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evaluating SSL VPNs' Consider NEOTERIS, chosen as leader by top analysts!
The Gartner Group just put Neoteris in the top of its Magic Quadrant,
while InStat has confirmed Neoteris as the leader in marketshare.
     
Find out why, and see how you can get plug-n-play secure remote access in
about an hour, with no client, server changes, or ongoing maintenance.
          
Visit us at: http://www.neoteris.com/promos/sf-6-9.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------
The information transmitted in this message is intended only for the person or entity to whom it is addressed and may 
contain confidential and/or privileged material.  Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking 
of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. 
 If you received this in error, please contact the sender and destroy any copies of this document.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evaluating SSL VPNs' Consider NEOTERIS, chosen as leader by top analysts!
The Gartner Group just put Neoteris in the top of its Magic Quadrant,
while InStat has confirmed Neoteris as the leader in marketshare.

Find out why, and see how you can get plug-n-play secure remote access in
about an hour, with no client, server changes, or ongoing maintenance.

Visit us at: http://www.neoteris.com/promos/sf-6-9.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------