AES(Advanced Encryption Standard) is a block cipher adopted as an encryption standard by the U.S. government. It has been analyzed extensively and is now used widely worldwide. AES was announced by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as U.S. FIPS PUB 197 (FIPS 197) in November 26, 2001 after a 5-year standardization process. It became effective as a standard May 26, 2002. As of 2006, AES is one of the most popular algorithms used in symmetric key cryptography.
The cipher was developed by two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, and submitted to the AES selection process under the name "Rijndael", a combination of the names of the inventors.
128,192,256 are key sizes (128-bit, 192-bit, and/or 256-bit) for AES.
Sparse file is a pre-allocated NTFS file, whose physical size (actual disk space used) grows as new data is added to it.
The physical size of the volume file can only increase up to the maximum value that is specified by the user. After the maximum specified size is reached, the physical size of the container will remain constant.
Note: Sparse files can only be created in the NTFS file system. If you are creating a volume file on the FAT file system, this option will be disabled. The size of a sparse-file-hosted volume reported by Windows will always be equal to its maximum size (which you specify when creating the volume).
To find out current physical size, right-click the file in Windows Explorer, then select Properties and see the Size on disk value. The physical size will not decrease when files are deleted from the volume.
WARNING: If data is written to a sparse-file-hosted volume when there is not enough free space in its host file system, the encrypted file system may get corrupted.
Backup refers to copying data into an image file, which can be used to restore it to the original state if there is any data loss. QILING Disk Master supports to create image files for disks, partitions and volumes etc.
Incremental backup only back up the changed or new added data based on the last backup. Compared to full backup, the image file of incremental backup is much smaller, and the operation will cost less time. In addition, it can store multiple backup versions at different time point, which allows users restoring data by any version based on their needs.
Recovery is a process of restoring files, system, partition or disk to a previous state if there is a disk problem, such as, system crash, hardware and software failure, data loss, virus and hacker attack, etc.
Clone refers to create a duplicate of the source partitions/disk by coping it to a destination disk/partition, then the destination disk/partition possesses the same content as the original one. What's worse mentioning here is that the process of clone will overwrite all the previous data on the destination partition/disk.
On a hard disk, each track can be divided into a number of sections. And each section can be called a sector. It is the smallest storage unit on a hard drive, and each one stores a fixed number of data. A sector is equal to 512 bytes, 1024, 2048 or 4096 bytes.
Rescue disk can be a CD, DVD, USB external drive or flash drive, which consists of a standalone version of QILING Disk Master that can be booted. This rescue disk can be used to restore system and partitions when your system is unable to boot. As long as the operating system has been booted from the rescue disk, users can carry out the operation of restore by QILING Disk Master.