RE: Copying HDDs for forensic purposes?

[Gene LeDuc <Gene.LeDuc () tns-md com>]

I've done this to a NTFS partition using dd (to do the copy) under linux and
then examining the file (flagged R/O) with sleuthkit and autopsy (both
free).  Sleuthkit provides the back-end forensic utilities and autopsy
provides a web server interface to sleuthkit so that you can do your digging
from any browser.  I installed both on a RedHat 8 system and it did what I
needed; I used it mostly to recover files that had been deleted and then
cleared from the Windows Recycle Bin.  Use www.sleuthkit.org as your
starting point if this is the way you want to go.

Regards, and happy hunting!
Gene

-----Original Message-----
From: Spencer D'oro [mailto:sdoro () comcast net]
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 10:09 AM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Copying HDDs for forensic purposes?


Hello to all,

I am interested in forensic examinations of hard drives.  In the little
material I have seen, the authors state that no examination should be made
of an original device; that instead a copy should be made and all
examinations made to that device.  My question is this:  If you make a copy
of the hard drive, does it copy the sectors that had recently deleted files
or does it just mark them as blank in the partition table of the new drive?
What if the source is physically damaged?  Or do you need a special utility
to get the "erased" data?  Thanks in advance for the help.

Spencer


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