IsoBuster 2.5 released - Data Recovery Software with Stream support

December 19, 2008

We released IsoBuster 2.5 today

Both the UDF file system, on optical media, and the NTFS file system, on Hard Drives, support Streams. Streams are a way to store extra metadata for a file, not in the file body itself, but in a stream that is attached to the file, and this stream is completely hidden for the user (unless special tools are used). For instance virus scanners sometimes add a stream to a file that they have scanned, or Windows VISTA adds a stream to mark a file as 'downloaded from a network' etc.

While streams are supported in the UDF specification for a while now, they have never really been implemented by applications that create UDF discs, so there was no need to recover streams from discs. This is changing now and more and more applications, when they create a UDF disc from files on an NTFS partition, will also convert the NTFS Alternate Data streams to so called Named streams on the UDF disc.

This is why IsoBuster now also supports them, and when you extract files from the UDF file system, and these files contain Named Streams, and you extract them to an NTFS formatted hard drive, then IsoBuster will convert the UDF Named Streams to NTFS Alternate Data streams, to recreate the original situation.

Changes:

  • Support for UDF Named streams in the core engine.
  • Ability to extract UDF Named Streams to NTFS Alternate Data streams (default ON).
  • Ability to show UDF Named streams as separate files, for analysis, a [Business] feature.
  • Support for UDF System streams (shown in a separate UDF file system).
  • Ability to extract Mac Resource forks (from UDF / HFS or ISO9960) to NTFS Alternate Data streams (default ON).
  • Ability to extract Mac Properties (from UDF / HFS or ISO9960) to NTFS Alternate Data streams (combined with resource forks).
  • Ability to include folder information when creating a File List (Need to enable in Options).
  • Implemented Command Line Parameter "/ep:" to avoid poppups during automated extraction.
  • Support for VMWare Hard Drive *.vmdk image files containing FAT.

Improvements:

  • Improvements to detect and find more FAT partitions.
  • Recognition of Dynamic partitions.
  • Improved support for *.gi multi-file image files.
  • Removed "This is a packet written disc. Errors are not abnormal on this disc" warning for all type discs other than CD.
  • "UD.DAT", a typical BD mastering file, is now part of the files that are automatically recognized when opening an image file.
  • Ability to open and support for VMWare Floppy *.flp image files.
  • Do NOT prompt and ask if a file should be over-written when going through the temp folder (e.g. drag and drop).
  • Display 8 characters in a File List (e.g. 00000001) instead of 7, because for BD Dual Layer (which can contain up to 50 GB) 8 characters are required.
  • Various GUI improvements and changes.

Fixes:

  • The Toolbar does not change the homepage anymore
  • Fixed extremely rare exception error, seen only on one data set, during the "Find missing files and folders" scan.
  • Fixed issue that prevented BD drive write-ability to be detected properly when no BD disc was mounted.
  • Fixed negative % progress when verifying files on DL BD discs with over 40 GB of data.

Download this version here.