Atola Insight Forensic: Main Window

This page provides information on basic Atola Insight Forensic controls.

1. Back and Forward buttons

These buttons allow you to go to the previous screen of the program. This may be useful if you'd like to see previous output or quickly restart a process.

2. Main menu

You use this menu to navigate through different parts of the software.

3. Case

This panel shows the current case number or allows assigning a case number.

4. Source Port controls and indicators

The source port consists of several parts:

• Power button. Allows to manually apply power to the hard drive attached to the DiskSense unit.
  • When power is on, single button click sends a spin down command first and after that performs power-off.
  • When power is on, you can click the button second time during spin down to instantly power the device off.
• Re-Identify button. Used when you replace the hard drive.
• HDD model, firmware, and serial number. Hard drive identification info.
• Device interface type. Can be SATA, USB, IDE.
• DCO. Indicates whether Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) is activated.
• HPA. Indicates whether Host Protection Area (HPA) is activated.
• PWD. Indicates if the hard drive is locked with an ATA password.

Port context (right-click) menu

• Select Source... Allows choosing another source device (SATA/IDE/USB) (please see Attaching and detaching hard drives for more information).
• Select source file. Allows choose a raw image file located on the source device.
• Reset. Resets hard drive's interface.
• Re-identify. Should be used after you replace the drive.
• Spindown. Sends "Spindown Immediate" ATA command to the drive.
• Current Oscilloscope. Brings up the oscilloscope window.
• Terminal. Brings up RS-232/serial terminal window.
• Assign Case Number... Allows assinging a specific number to the open case.
• Print... Print or Export the whole case history.
• Export... Save the entire case history into a single file.
• Import... Import case history from a previously exported file.

5. Target Port controls and indicators

Target port has all features of Source port. Target port allows to plug one of the following:

• Device attached to the hardware target port (SATA or USB)
• PC device (hard drive attached directly to the host PC)
• Image file

6. Source Menu

• Select Source... Allows choosing another source device (SATA/IDE/USB) (please see Attaching and detaching hard drives for more information).
• Reset. Resets hard drive's interface.
• Re-identify. Should be used after you replace the drive.
• Spindown. Sends "Spindown Immediate" ATA command to the drive.
• Assign Case Number... Allows assinging a specific number to the open case.
• Print... Print or Export the whole case history.
• Export... Saves the entire case history into a single file.
• Import... Imports case history from a previously exported file.

7. Windows menu

This menu is used to open the Current Oscilloscope and Terminal windows.

• Current Oscilloscope. Helps to keep track of hard drive power consumption levels, can be especially useful for remote hard drive diagnostics.
• Terminal. Helps in accessing the firmware area of certain hard drive models for both manual and automatic firmware recovery modes. The serial port can also be used for certain diagnostic functions.

8. Selected device information

This panel shows detailed information about the currently attached device. View ID Sector link will open the full information on the ID sector returned by the hard drive.

9. Case history

Here you can see all actions that were done to the currently attached hard drive. If you'd like to get full details on an action, just click it and Atola Insight Forensic will show you the detailed report.

10. Attached Files

Insight Forensic allows attaching files to the case. Whenever you attach a picture, a thumbnail is added to the Home screen.

11. Status and Error registers

This panel displays raw contents of Status and Error ATA registers in real time.