Hetman Software Data Recovery Lab: Real Hardware, Real Failu

[hetmansoftware]

Hello everyone,

In this thread, I plan to share results from our testing lab for Hetman RAID Recovery and Hetman Partition Recovery.

We test the software with different RAID configurations, NAS devices, storage controllers, file systems, virtual disks, encryption, disk images, and various data loss scenarios.

I would be interested in feedback from HDDGuru members, especially from people who work with data recovery in practice.

Please feel free to comment on the tests themselves. If you think the methodology is weak, an important scenario is missing, or the test does not reflect a realistic recovery case, I would like to hear it.

You can also suggest:

RAID, NAS, or controller configurations to test;

file systems or encryption technologies;

damaged or incomplete RAID scenarios;

virtual disks and VM storage;

forensic image formats;

other recovery cases that would be useful to reproduce.

If there is functionality you would like to see in Hetman RAID Recovery or Hetman Partition Recovery, you are also welcome to describe it here. We can review such requests and, where they make sense, consider them for future versions.

I will use this thread to post test results, technical notes, screenshots, and related videos.

Feedback and criticism are welcome.

[Lardman]

We heard you the first time, after 4 posts it's beginning to feel like spam again.

[hetmansoftware]

In the latest version, we added support for VeraCrypt containers and encrypted partitions, including both standard and hidden volumes. Hetman Partition Recovery can unlock VeraCrypt volumes using a password, PIM, keyfile, or their combination, and then analyze the decrypted filesystem for existing and deleted files.

In this test video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlgMI807V2I

we covered three scenarios:

a VeraCrypt container protected with a password, PIM, and keyfile, with some test files deleted before recovery;

a USB drive containing a standard VeraCrypt volume and a hidden volume, both password-protected;

the same USB drive after its partition information was removed with the clean command in DiskPart.

In all three cases, the volumes were unlocked and their contents were accessible for analysis and recovery.

If you work with VeraCrypt in practice, please share the scenarios or features you would like us to support — we can review them for future versions.

[WebClaw]

Michael; your spamming now - a single thread can suffice.

[hetmansoftware]

One area we have been working on in Hetman RAID Recovery is support for RAID controller metadata. When supported metadata is present on the member disks, the software reads it and reconstructs the array automatically, so it is available for further analysis. In recent versions, we added support for Infortrend EonStor DS 1000 / ESDS 1012 RC metadata used in Infortrend storage systems.

In this test:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSKfPN-k2Ho

we covered:

• automatic RAID detection and manual reconstruction with RAID Constructor;
• the main parameters required for manual reconstruction;
• Thin and Thick volumes and SANWatch snapshots;
• recovery after deleting files or partitions inside an iSCSI LUN;
• recovery after removing Thin/Thick volumes in SANWatch;
• recovery of files from a SANWatch snapshot.

We have also tested RAID metadata from a number of other hardware and motherboard controllers:
Dell: PERC 6/i, H310, H700
LSI / 3ware: 3081E-R, MegaRAID SAS 84016E, 9280-4i4e, 9265-8i, 3ware 9750, 9650SE-4LPML
Adaptec: ASR-6405, ASR-6805T
Areca: ARC-1210, ARC-1260
HP/HPE Smart Array: P410/P410i, P822
IBM: ServeRAID M5016
Fujitsu: D3116, D2516-C11 GS1
Supermicro: AOC-USAS-S8iR
Dawicontrol: DC-624E
InLine: 76696C
AMD: RAIDXpert2
Intel: Rapid Storage Technology
Infortrend: EonStor DS 1000 / ESDS 1012 RC

The corresponding tests on our YouTube channel also contain practical information that can be useful for manual reconstruction, including disk order, stripe/block size, block/parity order, byte order, and disk offset.

If there is a controller or metadata format that you regularly encounter in real recovery cases and would like us to test, please suggest it.


WebClaw, Lardman,

Understood. The purpose of this new thread is exactly to keep all future Hetman Software tests and related technical updates in one place. I’ll contact the forum administrator and ask to have the other Hetman-created threads in this section removed, so that going forward I will use only this thread for our tests and updates.