Stellar Phoenix for Linux Data-recovery S/w 

With Linux gaining popularity as a server, it has become very necessary to have a data-recovery solution for it. The software should be able to recover data from Linux partitions that have either been deleted accidentally or by virus/worm or human attack. Stellar Phoenix for Linux is one such software that promises to recover lost data. It's supposed to recover deleted files, formatted or inaccessible drives and non-booting drives. 

Installing the software is a breeze. You don't even have to look at the installation screen, unless you want to change the default path of installation. Just connect the USB HASP key in any free USB port of you machine, insert the CD and press the Enter key five times and the installation will be over. The manual that came with the software is very well articulated and is available in multiple languages. One thing we disliked is that the software installs on Windows, and you have to pull out your Linux hard drive and plug it into the Windows machine to recover the data. It doesn't natively install on Linux. We used the software on a Linux hard drive that had two ext3 partitions. One was a normal ext3 and the other was an ext3 partition over a volume group having a single physical partition. We created and deleted a set of files on both partitions to check whether the software could recover them. To our surprise, the software worked perfectly well with the normal ext3 partition, but was unable to even read or detect the volume group. This can be a problem for users of recent versions of RedHat Linux and its variants such as Fedora. These versions by default create the root (/) partition as a volume group. The software also claims to recover data from sabotaged drive. That's a little misleading, because sabotage is a broad term. If somebody formats the partition and formats it with another file system, then the software can't do anything. In fact, we did just this, and the software couldn't even find the NTFS partition. 

Bottom Line: It's a good software if you don't have volume groups or partitions formatted with other file systems. 

Another fringe benefit you can get out of this software if you have a dual-boot system, is to view and copy your Linux partition files to your Windows partition without restarting the machine (something like ext2explorer).

Anindya Roy