What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?
This week I focused on strengthening the software-side documentation, refining our recovery test cases, and reviewing the feedback we received during the interim demo. Several TAs mentioned that parts of our technical explanation were not intuitive to people who haven’t been following our project closely. I spent time reorganizing our software documentation to make the recovery flow clearer in preparation for our final presentation.
Is your progress on schedule or behind?
I am on schedule based on our current project phase. Since we are waiting for hardware to arrive, my tasks this week focused on documentation.
What deliverables do you hope to complete next week?
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Incorporate additional adjustments based on interim demo feedback to improve clarity for non-technical audiences.
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Update and polish the recovery pipeline diagrams for the final presentation.
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Continue strengthening the software implementation documentation for the final report.
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Prepare the outline and visuals for the final presentation.
New Knowledge Gained
This project required me to deepen my understanding of file systems and data recovery, especially regarding how corruption manifests at different layers:
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File system metadata structures (FAT32)
I learned how directory entries, allocation tables, and cluster chains behave when partially overwritten or fragmented, and how this affects both carving and reconstruction. -
Behavior of corrupted storage devices:
I studied how failed drives often present inconsistent enumeration behavior, sector read instability, and partially valid metadata, making recovery nontrivial. -
Entropy-based recovery insights:
I researched how entropy can help distinguish meaningful remnants (text blocks, image signatures) from fully overwritten or empty regions.
This deeper understanding is now directly shaping how we structure our recovery test cases and how we explain our approach in the report.
Learning Strategies Used
To acquire this knowledge efficiently, I used:
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Technical blogs and digital forensics articles explaining real-world corruption patterns
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YouTube tutorials on filesystem internals and data carving techniques
- Discussion with Mars to align how these insights influence our recovery methods and documentation