Active Data Recovery Software has released the NTFS Reader for DOS, a DOS-interfaced freeware application for reading NTFS volumes from MS-DOS or Windows 9x environments.Features of NTFS Reader for DOS:
– Displays complete physical and logical drive information
– Supports IDE / ATA / SCSI drives
– Supports large (more than 8GB) Hard Drive
– Supports NTFS, NTFS5 file systems for reading
– Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 file systems for data writing
– Supports compressed and fragmented files on NTFS
– Supports partitions created in MS-DOS, Windows XP.2000.NT.ME.98.95
– Displays non-english and long file names
– Ability to preview file(s)/folder(s) before copying
– Supports search by file name or mask
– Disk Viewer displays content of the file in Hex/Text mode
Accessing NTFS from DOS has been around for over 5 years. One example, also free for read-only access:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml
NTFS2DOS (www.sysinternals.com) has been around for years, the read part is free, to write however, you must register..
JL
It is still news. Writing an NTFS driver is not exactly trivial, a lot of people do not know about the SySInternals driver, and if some have problems with that driver, there is this new one to try. IMO, this is still, very OSNews OS news.
Very bad news if you value your data security. Now any jerk with a DOS bootdisk can retrieve files off a Windows 2000 hard drive.
Any unencrypted filesystem is inherently insecure. Windows 2000 has built-in encryption and you should use that if you want to secure any important data.
You can’t rely on *any* file system structure to hide any important data. You still need to encrypt your stuff if you want them safe. Then even if a DOS can access an encrypted NTFS, it’s still encrypted.
“Very bad news if you value your data security. Now any jerk with a DOS bootdisk can retrieve files off a Windows 2000 hard drive.”
If the information is important enough to you, it will be stored on a server in the server room, which is under lock and key. The server box itself will have a lock on it. Proper physical security is the first step in any security system.
There’s a balance between security strength and ease of data recovery when it comes to filing system design and system implementation.
One can not expect to have the best of both world in this situation, and therefore has to find a balance for your individual needs. If the data is so important, in the sense that it needs to be secure and to have some form of recovery, then one would go and encrypt the filing system (then the data, if you’re really paranoid (encryping twice)), and then also implement someform of RAID (except raid 0).
A person that use this product will probably just need to be able to read files from NTFS partition without wanting to boot into an OS with NTFS read ability (that, or no such OS is installed).
Just remove the floppy disk, protect the bios with password and deactivate all ports except the ps2 ones for mouse and keyboard… If needed, add hardware intrusion detection to the box to avoid some smart guy to open it and make a bios reset…
Cheers…
[but having critical data in a datacenter is still better then having it hanging arround in several boxes…]
P.S.- Yes, if you want security you will have to work very hard to have it… a security certification of the box software isn’t enought, not even close!!!
I’ve worked on 2000 serve and when it crashed i found that all of my backup files where corrupt no thanks to veritas
this is a good thing because if i had this utility i could of saved most of my files without a hastle. Very good topic “Osnews”.
Oh does anyone know how to get my linux to read NTFS on a computer?? Would highly apreciate it.
Thanks
re-compile the kernel with ntfs read support, if you are daring enable write support too.
make menuconfig
file systems….
see http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ – if you use RedHat, there is a loadable module available.
But if you use ‘dynamic disks’ in Windows 2K, this boot disk will not recognise the partitions?
Why is NTFS so much more difficuly than other FS’s? Because it’s undocumented? I find it interesting that it can be read, but not written.
Just curious…
It maintains a whole lot of stuff (indexes) that can be ignored when reading, but can easily be mangled as soon as you write.