Hi all,

One of my colleagues is looking for a hardware imager for her forensic business. She outsources the bad drives, so just requires a hardware imager for good drives.

Can anyone recommend an imager for this purpose? I have no experience with imagers for good drives. Currently they are using DD, but want a more compact hardware tool.

Thanks,
Nick

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Data Recovery Cape Town

Why not DDI? Too expensive for this kind of work?

DDI has a "CLONE GOOD DRIVE" feature.

I have also a stand-alone imager from StarTech, which says it can even skip bad sectors, but 9 out of 10 times I've tried it, it hangs during imaging and you have to start over.

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I did suggest a DDI but they don't want to spend that kind of money, they want a cheaper option. I'll have a Google and see what's on offer. It will only be for good drives so I'm sure they can pickup something cheap.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Nick_CT, in the world of Forensics, there is no such of the word CHEAP, if you are seeking PRO. tools/Appz

as an example here for you, there are many Appz/HW tools for for example Iphone/Smartphones (from A-Z) everything not going in details of those products, but the BEST FORENSIC tools of those costs FROM 8000$ (more or less) and UP,

i remember i asked last time for those and was like 12k $$$$ full forensic kit.

thats why they call it FORENSIC if forensic is the purpose of buying it my dear, if not , then no need to spend more on it, cheap App. or HW will clone and thats it

good luck

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I have an honours degree in digital forensics, so I am aware of this They have Encase, FTK, write blockers, etc. I was asking for suggestions of cheap hardware imagers for good drives that anyone has had experience with, not actual forensic equipment so to speak.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Hi, take a look here. There is another unit, let me search. http://www.jharddrive.com/products/hard ... ic_DR.html

Ok, here it is http://ca.startech.com/HDD/Duplicators/ ... UNIDUPDOCK.

Thanks mate.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

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http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
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Their requirement is only for good drives, so it should be sufficient. Thanks.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

I thing this one is with good price http://www.forensicpc.com/proddetail.asp?prod=TD1

If they have a very small budget, for begging they can set up one desktop PC with FTK Imager (free) with write blocker.

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Sistrum Data Recovery
http://www.sistrum.mk/en

Well, I used it several times for seagate drives with BSY bug, it failed. I used it yesterday to clone a drive that had 1 (ONE) bad sector and it failed too (despite the fact that I had the "skip bad sectors" feature ON).

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http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

I have a couple of the Startech duplicator docks and think that they can be pretty useful for forensic duplication. They definitely don't deal well with bad sectors, unlike what they suggest, and they can be a bit of a PITA when it comes to drives with HPA set. But for a price of $250, who can complain.

It should also be noted that they promote the ability to wipe a drive...this is only done by deleting sector 0, if memory serves me correct.

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Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

http://www.tableau.com/index.php?pageid ... &model=TD2

we use these( and the TD1's) , not sure on the cost tho, but they are fast.

Why not the Atola tools?

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If I read it correctly, they are looking for an economical tool that is more portable than a system running DD. Atola, to the best of my knowledge, is a lot more than $1000.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing