Atola Insight Forensic comes standard with a series of utility features for altering drive configurations and stored data. These features are usually used for research purposes, drive preparation for certain actions, or other case-specific tasks. These utilities eliminate the need in additional products used for minor tasks, which makes managing cases more efficient.
View and modify any sector with a single click of a button. Master Boot Records, FAT/NTFS/ext Boot Sector, HFS headers, NTFS File Record and Index structures are automatically detected and parsed into a human-readable form.
Many organizations require that target drives are wiped/erased before they are used to store forensic images. This is usually done to ensure the accuracy of data and, at the same time, verify the destination drive for any errors by overwriting its every sector. Atola Insight wipes drives at their maximum write speed using different methods including filling the drive with a specified HEX pattern, Zero-Fill, Secure Erase, NIST 800-88, and DoD 5220.22-M-compliant wiping:
We recommend trimming SSD drives used as target media on a regular basis to maximize data transfer speed. Additionally, this module shows how an attached SSD behaves during read operations on trimmed sectors.
To restore a drive from an image file, the Write from File feature allows easy file selection (raw, E01 and AFF4 are supported) and creating an identical copy of the original evidence drive. Alternatively, image a specific range of sectors from the file and to a specific location on the target drive by setting the start LBA.
Compare data stored on any 2 or more devices sector-by-sector. The number of matching and non-matching sectors is listed in real time for reference. This function is used to check whether or not two hard drives are identical.
Access and adjust the following HDD features: Advanced power management, Acoustic management and Read/Write caching via Insight's smooth, user-friendly interface.
Allows reading and adjusting the current device configuration including modification of the drive capacity.
Access and modify the following hard drive parameters using Atola Insight's interface.
Automatically removes LBA address restrictions set via Host Protected Area (HPA) or Device Overlay Configuration (DCO).
Set and remove ATA passwords quickly and easily. Using this function, you can set and remove the User ATA password (both levels High and Maximum are supported) and change the Master ATA password.
Unknown ATA passwords can be automatically extracted and removed from most hard drives using Atola Insight's Password Removal function (see details).
Quickly and easily repair so-called Software Bad Sectors (sectors with damaged ECC field). This feature is generally used for light bad sector repair.
Create a bad sector at any specified LBA by entering the sector number and clicking a single button. Reading of such sectors will now result in an Uncorrectable Error. The change is reversible using the Media Recovery feature, however, all data in such sectors will be lost. This feature is generally used for research.