Guide to Recover & Repair LEF File (Encase Logical Evidence File)

This article is an effort to illustrate Need to Repair LEF File that helps to recover Logical Evidence File. It also briefs you about What is Encase LEF File, Supported File Formats

What is EnCase LEF File?

LEF File is a Logical evidence File established & launched by Encase which is a concatenated family of forensics suite marketed by Guidance software. Expert Witness was the previous name for EnCase which was later renamed. These are the single files first seen in Encase 5 Version which helps to investigators to a digital image with respective to the evidences present on the local system of a user. During analysis of the file during investigation, expert is provided to save the file as an Image File. This Encase LEF File deliver the expert with the replica of evidence without influencing or manipulating the original data file. This article compiles to illustrate the necessity to Repair LEF File that helps to recover Logical Evidence File.

LEF File Supported Extensions

The experts can create logical evidence in the below mentioned two different formats:

• L01 File : These files are the single files which helps to extract selected folder instead of obtaining the complete information. Logical evidence files or .L01 are created from existing files consisting evidence, previews, or extracting Smartphone data. The Current version of logical evidence files i.e, .Lx01 allows hashing as well as encryption to repair LEF File.
• E01 File : This file format allows to save the entire evidence and extracts the sensitive information as an image file .

Features of LEF L01 Files: Encase Evidence File

You need to understand Some of the important features provided by LEF files to repair LEF File & recover Logical Evidence File. Following are the features:

• The LEF L01 files are generated to extract image files with respect to selected files or folders depending on users requirement.
• Data Consistency: It maintains to deliver data consistency i.e., all the extracted information & evidences are stored in an original format.
• Data Integrity: The image of selected evidences is complete in every sense. It extracts all the data to maintain integrity.
• The LEF file helps save information from other EnCase sources such as Snapshots, Records etc.
• To maintain the data integrity, each extraction of original evidence item undergoes MD5 rehashing algorithms.

The above features will give you an overall idea about what is LEF file format in detail and what features it possess to begin the process to Repair LEF File & Recover Logical Evidence File.

Resolve to Recover LEF File Errors :

Nowadays Disk Size in terabytes are not enough to handle the data inside one case, especially when there are large number of emails. Simple & efficient way to preserve data is by creating Logical Evidence File. But sometimes, using LEF File or Logical Evidence File may cause serious troubles while collection of data. It is somehow logical to save the information separately for every node.

There are some major issues about Logical Evidence Files that are most oftenly asked as user query to Repair LEF File.

• " Does the L01 stores only logical data, But within the file systems it can be Files & metadata. Then what related to unallocated space, Internal Files, etc? "
  • Resolution: Since Entities in Encase are stored as Virtual Files, It can be accessible Internal File systems & Unused Disk Area, For Instance. Unallocated File on volume are accessible as Unallocated Virtual file.

Some Other Errors Found are:

• EnCase not loading Case File
• Invalid Hex Character
• EnCase gives the white screen
• LEF File corruption
• Job failed while processing Image

All the above errors must be solved to recover LEF & repair Logical Evidence File

Reason For Encase LEF File corruption

• Virus Attacks: The fundamental Reason for LEF File corruption is computer virus. There are no computer file which are unaffected & prone to virus attacks. These bugs can attack the LEF Files and make the EnCase data inaccessible for forensic use & thereby causing user to repair LEF File.
• Sudden system shut down is another basic cause of corruption that leads to inaccessibility of computer files and data. Unexpectedly shut-down or forceful cancellation of EnCase software may lead to prompt data corruption.
• Malfunctioning of the Software : Some Inbuilt bugs & incompatibility of the software may lead to corruption of the file. Inadequate resources in the Operating system environment & disk Storage may lead to malfunction of the software thereby causing LEF File corruption causing to recover LEF & repair Logical Evidence File.
• Hardware Inefficiency & Failure: Disk Storage Deficiency may lead to malfunction of the software thereby causing LEF File Corruption.

Alternative Solution:

There are LEF viewer available in Internet may be useful to read damaged File that cannot be opened up in Encase. These Viewer help to access the sensitive information for the investigators as well as experts to act as an excellent tool to repair LEF File. These LEF Reader Tool may be helpful to scan all the artefacts that are extracted maintaining the data Integrity & without any data loss.

Conclusion

The above mentioned details are described to help user to to recover LEF & repair Logical Evidence File to extract all the evidence from File. If you need to share any other information apart from this blog you can contact us to include it into the blog.