This article is useful for users who own a standalone R-Studio license and need to recover data from another computer. According to its EULA, R-Studio Standalone can only be used on one machine and cannot be transferred after activation. However, technically, there's a simple way to recover lost files from another computer on your corporate or home network, or even over the Internet if the storage device isn't large. The idea is quite simple: we can create an image of a disk on a remote computer over the network, store it on the local computer, and then open the image to extract the required files.

R-Studio Corporate, Technician, and T80+ support network recovery for remote computers, but the Standalone license doesn't include this capability. It has only one network feature: imaging the disks on the remote computer over the network.

Besides, under network recovery, there's no need to open the remote computer, remove its disk, and connect the disk to the local computer. Such manipulation requires technical skills, and sometimes it's even impossible for various reasons: brand computers may have warranty seals, M.2 disks are hard to deal with, etc.

This article will show you how to use this feature in the Standalone license to recover files from disks on other computers.

By the way, R-Studio Emergency, which is an integral part of any R-Studio license package, is not a solution for this case because it cannot be used on a computer other than the one on which R-Studio is registered and activated under the Standalone license.

We will use the following scenario in this article: A Windows 10 laptop with a BitLocker-encrypted file system cannot start due to an OS failure. Some user's files have to be extracted from this laptop. We will use a previously created backup file with the BitLocker Drive Encryption recovery key to unlock this file system.

Network Configuration

The Figure below shows our network setup for data recovery.

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Both computers are connected through a home network using Ethernet

1. A local computer connected to the local network with R-Studio installed. We'll use it to create an R-Studio Agent Emergency startup disk, store the image, and perform data recovery.
2. The laptop with a damaged file system.

On the host computer, you also need to open all inbound and outbound traffic for R-Studio and disable antivirus software that may severely degrade R-Studio performance. Also, avoid transferring large amounts of data over the network while creating the image - this congestion can significantly increase the time required to create the image.

Start the remote computer with R-Studio Agent Emergency
You need to do the following things before you start the remote computer:

• Disable Secure boot in the remote computer's BIOS. Secure boot is almost always enabled in computers running under Windows 10/11.
• Configure the BIOS of the remote computer to start the computer from the device that has R-Studio Agent Emergency installed.

Please note that the pictures below are taken directly from a real LCD monitor and make allowances for the image quality in this section.

1. Start the remote computer.

> R-Studio Agent Emergency will start and show its prompt. Then the program will start querying the network DHCP server for an IP address. If it acquires the address, it shows it on the screen.

If R-Studio Agent Emergency can't automatically configure its network settings via DHCP (as it has happened in our case), you will have to do this manually.

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2. Enter the interface name eth0, specify its IP address, and press ENTER on the keyboard. Then enter gw to configure the default gateway, specify its IP address, and press ENTER on the keyboard again.

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> R-Studio Agent Emergency will show that it's ready to accept incoming connections from R-Studio.

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Establish a connection between R-Studio and R-Studio Agent Emergency

1. Click the Connect to Remote button or select Connect to Remote in the Drive menu and enter the IP address of the remote computer on the Connect to Remote Computer dialog box. Leave the Password field blank and 3174 in the Port field.

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> R-Studio will connect to the remote computer and show its hard drive and logical disk structure in the Drives panel.

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R-Studio Agent Emergency will also show that it's connected with the host computer.

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Create an image over the network

1. Click the Create image button to start imaging the system disk on the remote computer.

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> The Create Image dialog box will appear.

2. Select a place on the local computer to save the image and specify other imaging parameters

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and click the Start button.

You may read more about these parameters in R-Studio's online help: Images.

> R-Studio will start disk imaging and show its progress.

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When R-Studio finishes this process, it will show this in its log.

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You can now disconnect the remote computer and turn it off.

Select the Remote Computer and click the Disconnect button.

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Only the local computer will remain in the Device view pane.

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You may now turn off the remote computer.

Working with the created image

1. Click the Open Image button to load the image and select it.

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> It will appear on the Device view.

2. Double-click the BitLocker container, enter the Recovery key to unlock the BitLocker container,

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and click the Unlock button.

> R-Studio will start file enumeration on the unlocked partition.

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3. Mark the files you want to recover

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and click the Recovery Marked button

> The Recover Marked Files dialog box will appear.

4. Specify recovery parameters and click the OK button.

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You may read more about these parameters in R-Studio's online help: Basic File Recovery.

> R-Studio will start file recovery and show its progress.

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Once recovery is complete, R-Studio will display its results.

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