Atola Insight Forensic – Extract Data From Damaged Hard Drives
Hard drives are one of the most crucial elements in forensic. But just like any other electronic or mechanical device, hard drives can die or get damaged for various reasons. The sudden death of the hard drives physically or by an unwanted rebooting will cost the forensic scientists valuable evidence. This is something that can’t be afforded by the forensic department because it might keep the criminals behind the cloak forever. Therefore recovering data from the damaged hard drive has to be done at any cost. This is where Atola Insight comes to play. Let us take a look at how Atola Insight Forensic turns the impossible into possible with their imaging system.
Atola multiple-pass imaging system
Atola Insight Forensic is equipped with complex functionality that allows imaging and analysis of even the damaged hard drives by preventing further deterioration of the device. The imaging done by the Atola TaskForce is unmatched and cannot be compromised by any other tool. It enters and handles the bad sectors such as a damaged hard drive most gently and thoroughly at a high speed. This software wrapped in a simple and user-friendly interface is a complete tool for computer forensic analysis. This powerful imager packs a plethora of features that can perform a wide array of functions where the other forensic imagers stall or abort.
The noteworthy features of the imager include:
- With an imaging speed up to 520 MB/s, it is the fastest in the industry
- The imaging is multi-pass for the damaged hard drives
- In the network or the target devices, raw target images or E01 is created
- Meticulous automated HDD diagnostics
- ATA password extraction
- An automatic detailed report by the case management system
- Various data erasure methods
- Wide media support like SATA, IDE, SAS, USB
- Has a built-in hardware write blocker
The imaging process of hard drive
The problem with normal imagers is that they have a linear process of imaging which on encountering a bad sector on the drive slows down drastically. The result of this is the freezing of the imager. Whereas the Atola TaskForce works on a special imaging algorithm providing deliberate timeout and control of block size. The special algorithm will speed up the imaging of a drive that is damaged and increases the amount of retrieved data.
The software uses a small block that pays off when you want to retrieve data from an unstable drive but this slows down the imaging process and the chance of aggravating the damage is high. Therefore the Atola Insight uses large blocks with minimal timeouts during the first few passes. It reserves the areas that are slow to the last pass for reading by the use of small blocks. This multi-pass imaging technique helps in attaining a high imaging speed of 520 MB/sec in the good areas of the drive. In the bad areas of the drive, the speed is not compromised and is comparatively higher than the other drive imagers. The fact that adds to the feather of Atola is that the block sizes and timeouts are automatically adjusted.
Bottom line
This powerful and robust imaging tool is a boon for computer forensics and investigators as it gives access to even the data that are considered to be inaccessible. With automatic functions and adjustable timeouts, this is one of the best and fastest software that is available for data extraction from damaged hard drives effortlessly.
