The recovery of raw data is the first stage in a critical process of recovering intelligble data or files. The raw data provides the bits and bytes of the filesystem that is used to organise the files on the media or device. The evolution of computer operating systems has seen many filesystems fall in and out of favour, so on one particular type of system, it may be possible to find many differing filesystem types.

The CONTENTENGINEER Group has expertise, the knowledge base as well as appropriate software and hardware tools to re-assemble both filesystems, their directory structures and the all important files contained therein; to complete a successful recovery engagement. These help pages detail the more common filesystems and interface types that the Group deals with, but in no way should it be considered a definitive list. Additional filesystems and interfaces to devices are introduced as and when by software developers, and will be added as appropriate.

Refer to the downloads section for more information about the units of measure in this section.

Acronym	Description	Max File/Filesystem
FAT12	Microsoft Disk Basic	32MiB/1-32MiB
FAT16	MS-DOS V2	32MiB/16MiB-2GiB
FAT32	Windows (95) Filesystem	4GiB/512MiB-2TiB[32GiB]
NTFS	Windows NT Filesystem	16EiB/16EiB 16TiB/256TiB(NT)
VxFS	VERITAS Filesystem	16EiB
UFS1	UNIX 'standard' Filesystem	4GiB/256TiB
UFS2	UNIX Filesystem II	32PiB/1YiB
JFS	[IBM] Journal Filesystem	8EiB/4PiB
HFS	Apple (Mac OS) Filesystem	8EiB/8EiB
XFS	[SGI] Journal Filesystem	9EiB/9EiB
NSS	Novell Filesystem	8TiB/8TiB
NWFS	Novell Netware Filesystem	4GiB/1TiB
ext2	Extended Journal Filesystems (Linux)	2TiB/32TiB
ext3	Extended Filesystem 3 (Linux)	2TiB/32TiB
reiserFS	[SuSE] Reiser Journal Filesystem	8TiB/16TiB
UDF	Standard layout for CD (ISO9660)	16EiB
ZFS	Sun Microsystems	16EiB/16EiB

Acronym	Description	Performance
IDE	Integrated Drive Electronics	See PATA
EIDE	Enhanced IDE	See PATA
PATA	Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment
	ATA-1, ATA, IDE	3.3-8.3MB/s
	ATA-2, EIDE, Fast ATA, Ulta ATA	11.1-16.6MB/s
	ATA-3, EIDE	11.1-16.6MB/s
	ATA/ATAPI-4, Ultra DMA/33	16.7-33.3MB/s
	ATA/ATAPI-5, Ultra DMA/66	44.4-66.7MB/s
	ATA/ATAPI-6, UDMA5 Ultra DMA/100	100MB/s
	ATA/ATAPI-7, UDMA6 Ultra DMA/133	133MB/s
	ATA/ATAPI-8 [Indevelopment]	Unknown
SATA	Serial ATA	150MB/s
USB	Universal Serial Bus
	USB1.0 Low Speed	1.5Mbit/s
	USB1.1 Full Speed	12MBit/s
	USB2.0 Low Speed	400Mbit/s
FW	Firewire
	FW 400 S100	98Mbit/s
	FW 400 S200	197Mbit/s
	FW 400 S400	384MBit/s
	FireWire FW800 1394b	786Mbit/s
	USB1.1 Full Speed	12MBit/s
	USB2.0 Low Speed	400Mbit/s
NFS	Network FileSystem (UNIX) IP based file sharing protocol	Depends on network
CIFS	Common Internet FileSystem (Windows) IP based file sharing (Windows)	Depends on network
SCSI	Small Computer Systems Interface
	SCSI (8 bit)	5MB/s
	Fast SCSI (8 bits)	10MB/s
	Wide SCSI (16 bits)	20MB/s
	Ultra SCSI (8 bits)	20MB/s
	Ultra Wide SCSI (16 bits)	40MB/s
	Ultra2 SCSI (8 bits)	40MBs
	Ultra2 Wide SCSI (16 bits)	80MB/s
	Ultra3 SCSI (16 bits)	160MB/s
	Ultra-320 SCSI (16 bits)	320MB/s
SSA	Serial SCSI [IBM] (1 bit 400MBit/s)	80MB/s
SAS	Serial Attach SCSI 3Gbit	375MB/s
iSCSI	SCSI-3 embedded over TCP-IP (block level access protocol)	Depends on network
FC-AL	Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop	200MB/s full duplex
FC-SW	Fibre Channel Switched	1-10Gbit/s
FCIP	Fibre Channel over IP	Depends on network
iFCP	IP Fibre Channel	Depends on network