A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's structure and data typically stored in one or more computer files on another storage device. Traditionally, disk images were bit-by-bit copies of every sector on a hard disk often created for digital forensic purposes, but it is now common to only copy allocated data to reduce storage space. Compression and deduplication are commonly used to reduce the size of the image file set. Disk imaging is done for a variety of purposes including digital forensics, cloud computing, system administration, as part of a backup strategy, and legacy emulation as part of a digital preservation strategy. Disk images can be made in a variety of formats depending on the purpose. Virtual disk images are intended to be used for cloud computing, ISO images are intended to emulate optical media and raw disk images are used for forensic purposes. Proprietary formats are typically used by disk imaging software. Despite the benefits of disk imaging the storage costs can be high, management can be difficult and they can be time consuming to create.
The Coroner's Toolkit is a suite of free computer security programs by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema for digital forensic analysis. The suite runs under several Unix-related operating systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, SunOS/Solaris, Linux, and HP-UX. TCT is released under the terms of the IBM Public License.
Computer forensics is a branch of digital forensic science pertaining to evidence found in computers and digital storage media. The goal of computer forensics is to examine digital media in a forensically sound manner with the aim of identifying, preserving, recovering, analyzing and presenting facts and opinions about the digital information.
Disk cloning is the process of duplicating all data on a digital storage drive, such as a hard disk or solid state drive, using hardware or software techniques. Unlike file copying, disk cloning also duplicates the filesystems, partitions, drive meta data and slack space on the drive. Common reasons for cloning a drive include; data backup and recovery; duplicating a computer's configuration for mass deployment and for preserving data for digital forensics purposes. Drive cloning can be used in conjunction with drive imaging where the cloned data is saved to one or more files on another drive rather than copied directly to another drive.
A disk editor is a computer program that allows its user to read, edit, and write raw data on disk drives ; as such, they are sometimes called sector editors, since the read/write routines built into the electronics of most disk drives require to read/write data in chunks of sectors. Many disk editors can also be used to edit the contents of a running computer's memory or a disk image.
In computing, a file system or filesystem is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one large body of data with no way to tell where one piece of data stopped and the next began, or where any piece of data was located when it was time to retrieve it. By separating the data into pieces and giving each piece a name, the data are easily isolated and identified. Taking its name from the way a paper-based data management system is named, each group of data is called a "file". The structure and logic rules used to manage the groups of data and their names is called a "file system."
In computing, data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).
This is an alphabetical list of articles pertaining specifically to software engineering.
TestDisk is a free and open-source data recovery utility that helps users recover lost partitions or repair corrupted filesystems. TestDisk can collect detailed information about a corrupted drive, which can then be sent to a technician for further analysis. TestDisk supports DOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS, and MacOS. TestDisk handles non-partitioned and partitioned media. In particular, it recognizes the GUID Partition Table (GPT), Apple partition map, PC/Intel BIOS partition tables, Sun Solaris slice and Xbox fixed partitioning scheme. TestDisk uses a command line user interface. TestDisk can recover deleted files with 97% accuracy.
The host protected area (HPA) is an area of a hard drive or solid-state drive that is not normally visible to an operating system. It was first introduced in the ATA-4 standard CXV (T13) in 2001.
Anti–computer forensics or counter-forensics are techniques used to obstruct forensic analysis.
BasisTech is a software company specializing in applying artificial intelligence techniques to understanding documents and unstructured data written in different languages. It has headquarters in Somerville, Massachusetts with a subsidiary office in Tokyo. Its legal name is BasisTech LLC.
File carving is the process of reassembling computer files from fragments in the absence of filesystem metadata.
Mobile device forensics is a branch of digital forensics relating to recovery of digital evidence or data from a mobile device under forensically sound conditions. The phrase mobile device usually refers to mobile phones; however, it can also relate to any digital device that has both internal memory and communication ability, including PDA devices, GPS devices and tablet computers.
The digital forensic process is a recognized scientific and forensic process used in digital forensics investigations. Forensics researcher Eoghan Casey defines it as a number of steps from the original incident alert through to reporting of findings. The process is predominantly used in computer and mobile forensic investigations and consists of three steps: acquisition, analysis and reporting.
AppleDisk Image is a disk image format commonly used by the macOS operating system. When opened, an Apple Disk Image is mounted as a volume within the Finder.
Autopsy is computer software that makes it simpler to deploy many of the open source programs and plugins used in The Sleuth Kit. The graphical user interface displays the results from the forensic search of the underlying volume, making it easier for investigators to flag pertinent sections of data. The tool is largely maintained by Basis Technology Corp. with the assistance of programmers from the community. The company sells support services and training for using the product.
Kali Linux is a Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security. Kali Linux is based on the Debian Testing branch: most packages Kali uses are imported from the Debian repositories.
CAINE Linux is an Italian Linux live distribution managed by Giovanni "Nanni" Bassetti. The project began in 2008 as an environment to foster digital forensics and incidence response (DFIR), with several related tools pre-installed.
