Introduction
Atola Insight Forensic is a fast forensic imager with the capacity to perform 3 simultaneous imaging sessions on a wide range of media.
It also offers complex yet highly automated data recovery functions on failing storage devices and provides utilities for accessing hard drives at the lowest level. Its sophisticated software is wrapped in a simple and effective user interface.
Designed for use both in the lab and in the field, Insight is developed by a team of industry renowned data recovery engineers in collaboration with law enforcement agencies and forensic experts from around the globe.
It combines portable deployment with a hardware write blocker on source ports and practical remote forensic acquisition options for field and lab work.
Q&A
What is the fastest forensic imager in 2026?
Atola TaskForce 2 is the fastest forensic imager in 2026 delivering up to 550 GB/min of overall performance based on 25+ parallel imaging sessions, dual 10GbE connectivity, and a 25G Fiber extension.
Atola Insight Forensic system includes:
- Insight Forensic software that runs on Windows PC
- DiskSense 2 hardware unit - released in July 2021
- Hardware extensions (optional)
We stand behind our product. If the hardware unit malfunctions, it's covered by our
Lifetime warranty for as long as your subscription is active.
The subscription includes 2-3 software updates in a year.
Parallel imaging
Atola Insight is equipped with server-grade motherboard and CPU to sustain multiple imaging sessions at the top native speeds of the evidence drives, whether in good or bad condition.
- 3 simultaneous imaging sessions + multitasking
- 2 built-in 10Gb Ethernet ports
- Imaging session speed up to 500 MB/s
- E01, AFF4 or Raw target images created in the network or on target drives
- Up to 3 targets per imaging session
- Support of SATA, IDE, USB drives
- Via extensions: SAS, M.2 NVMe and PCIe AHCI SSDs, Apple PCIe (2013-2015)
- Built-in hardware write blocker for all source ports
- Remote forensic drive acquisition via iSCSI
Damaged drive support
All features are designed to support damaged media. In cases where other imagers stall or abort on media errors, Atola Insight can acquire a usable image. Types of damage supported: degraded or damaged heads, scratches on platters, logical errors, freezing drives, old drives with worn-out magnetic layer.
- In-depth automated drive diagnostics
- Multipass imaging of damaged drives
- Automated imaging of freezing media
- Bad sector recovery
- Segmented hashing for bad drive's image verification
- HDD current monitoring for continuous diagnosis
Forensic feature set
Forensic data recovery specialists will take advantage of the low-level features listed below.
- Locate sectors - detect which files and partitions they belong to specified drive sectors
- On-the-fly sector-level Artifact finder based on Intel Hyperscan engine
- Hash calculation (linear and segmented): MD5, SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512
- Wiping methods including DoD 5220.22-M, Secure Erase, NIST 800-88, Pattern Erase
- Regaining access to ATA-locked drives
- Forensic file recovery for NTFS, APFS (with encrypted volumes), XFS, ext4/3/2, exFAT, Btrfs, HFS/HFS+, FAT32, FAT16
- Case management system automatically generates detailed reports
- Comparison of 1 drive against 3 drives or images
- Detection and lifting of HPA/AMA/DCO restricted areas
- SSD Trim
It is the only forensic hardware tool in the world with Artifact search in the course of imaging and ability to locate files by sectors.
Other features are helpful to prepare drives for image acquisition, analysis, testing, or other specific tasks.
Workflow
1. Drive diagnostics
Atola imagers are the only products in both forensic and data recovery industries with the ability to automatically and accurately evaluate a hard drive's health and pinpoint specific problems. Atola Insight automatically diagnoses the drive's PCB, heads, media surface, firmware, and partitions, assesses imaging time, and creates a detailed report. The Diagnostics module helps you take informed decisions when getting down to imaging.
2. Accessing ATA-locked drives
Atola Insight automatically restores access to ATA-locked drives in just 2 minutes. This sophisticated feature is executed with one click of a button. Whenever possible, the stored credential is displayed.
3. Evidence drive imaging
Retrieving every fragment of data from a drive is crucial to a forensically sound data acquisition. Atola Insight's imaging system allows completely customizing imaging process to handle even damaged or unstable media.
It includes selective head imaging, which enables an individual imaging approach to each one based on the status of specific heads as identified by the Diagnostics module.
Not only does the imaging system cope with damaged drives, but it also runs multi-threaded sector-level analysis in the course of image acquisition:
- artifact search
- file signature detection
- entropy calculation
4. Forensic file recovery
Insight's file recovery module is simple, intuitive, and effective. It integrates seamlessly with the imaging functionality and the Case Management system to retrieve data effectively.
Sector-level analysis with Artifact Finder and Locate Sectors helps find forensic artifacts in unallocated and hidden spaces that you could miss.
