Recovering Compressed NTFS files

Author: Jeff Ingram

NTFS (New Technology File System) is a file system introduced by Microsoft. It supports hard drive sizes even up to 256TB.

File Compression

NTFS is capable of compressing its files to save disk space. Simply put, it shrinks folders, files, or disks, to allow the effective use of disk space. But file compression negatively affects performance. In addition, when data loss occurs, it makes file recovery from NTFS more difficult.

The following are NTFS compression performance characteristics. When a user copies or moves a compressed NTFS file into another folder, it will decompress the file, copy or move it to a new location, and compress the file. This happens even when users copy or move the file between two folders on the same PC. Expansion of compressed file also happens so NTFS compression is actually not capable of saving network bandwidth.

Data Recovery

But even with the difficulty brought about by NTFS compression, it is possible to do a NTFS recovery even without the help of a data recovery specialist. A Windows user can resort to utilizing a software that offers HDD recovery. There are many softwares for data recovery which are out in the market. One of which is SoftAmbulance. They have products to retrieve electronic information. In terms of partition recovery, they have EFS (Encrypted File System) Recovery which can recover files from NTFS partitions. It can be used on any personal computer with any Windows version.

In choosing NTFS recovery software, one should pick a software that considers compression algorithms which are used in NTFS encryption. Otherwise, much of the functionality of the data recovery tools will be lost when disks are accessed in low-level mode. This gives a compressed binary stream in place of the actual file contents. In this case, the signature search algorithms are rendered inefficient. Data recovery tools without awareness of NTFS compression will just fail to retrieve compressed files in case of a file system problem.

Moreover, there are limitations and restrictions to NTFS compressed data recovery. The ability of a data recovery tool depends on a case-by-case basis. Generally, it is easy to recover NTFS-compressed data from formatted NTFS disks. But the chances of recovery for compressed files are lower than non-compressed files especially when the file system is badly damaged. Under any circumstance, a user should try if his files can still be recovered through the use of an effective recovery software.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/databases-articles/recovering-compressed-ntfs-files-6777752.html
About the Author
Are you looking for more information regarding NTFS recovery? Visit http://hetmanrecovery.com/recovery_news/recovering-compressed-ntfs-files.htm?utm_nooverride=1 today!