Atola Blog

Atola TaskForce

Imaging RAID 0 array

TaskForce has a unique RAID configuration detection module. Furthermore, it is able to sustain multiple high-speed imaging sessions on its 18 ports. This makes it a perfect imager to perform reassembly of RAID with an unknown configuration and fast forensic imaging of such arrays. Here is how imaging RAID 0 array becomes an effortless job! Assembling a RAID 0 array To assemble RAID 0, follow these steps: Connect the drives that make up a RAID array to the TaskForce hardware unit. Most importantly, make sure to switch the ports to the Source mode; Click the RAID button in the left-side taskbar 3. Select the drives in Select source device panel and Read more…

By Olga Milishenko, ago
Atola TaskForce

Imaging RAID 5 array with Atola TaskForce

Atola supports RAID imaging and provides a breakthrough configuration autodetection module for RAID 0, 1 and 5 with NTFS and ext4/3/2 file systems. More RAID types and file systems will be supported in the upcoming releases with RAID 10 coming by the end of 2020. Here is how to make a RAID image from RAID 5 with an unknown configuration. The RAID array can be imaged as a whole only its individual partitions.

By Yulia Samoteykina, ago
Atola TaskForce

Forensic RAID rebuild in Atola TaskForce 2020.7

Today we are introducing the largest firmware update of Atola TaskForce ever – 2020.7. It adds a new facet to the product turning it into the first forensic hardware RAID imager in the world and forensic RAID rebuild effortless! I’d like to start by revealing the pain digital forensic experts have these days. Quotes of forensic examiners about RAID image acquisition: “How would one go about imaging a “RAID server” “I will normally use <data recovery tool> to reconstruct they RAID as I like their interface and the ability to manually select different RAID parameters.”  “I am looking for options to Image a RAID storage on a windows 10 computer” Read more…

By Vitaliy Mokosiy, ago
Atola TaskForce

Damaged drive imaging with TaskForce: A drive with a damaged head

A damaged hard drive, especially when it comes to evidence drives, requires a complex imaging approach. It is necessary to avoid the drive’s further deterioration and data loss during damaged drive imaging. TaskForce system enhances your working with damaged evidence drives, minimizing the risk of losing data on the functioning parts of the head stack.  Diagnostics and selective head imaging TaskForce’s built-in drive diagnostics module automatically checks all subsystems of the evidence drive. At the end of the diagnostics process, it provides a clear and detailed report about its electronics and motor, head stack, media surface, firmware and file system.  In the Heads section of the diagnostics report, TaskForce forensic Read more…

By Olga Milishenko, ago
Conferences

Q&A during the Interpol Digital Forensics Expert Group 2020

On Tuesday, June 16 Atola’s Yulia Samoteykina spoke at Interpol’s annual Digital Forensics Expert Group. After the presentation about our imagers’ multi-pass imaging system and other damaged media functionality, we received a few follow-up questions. In this blog we would like to reiterate the answers to these questions: Can Atola imager acquire evidence from damaged SSDs? As is true with any type of media, the degree of damage will inform how we can help with data recovery from a specific device. SSD failures fall into three major categories: logical errors, hardware issues, firmware failure.  Atola imagers may be able to image data from an SSD with logical errors or hardware Read more…

By Vitaliy Mokosiy, ago
Business

Visit our virtual booth every Wednesday!

In the brave new world of physical distancing, when so many of the digital forensics events get canceled or postponed, we want to fill the void and keep the conversation going.  Atola is inviting you to our virtual booth. Starting May 20, we will be available for an hour-long live conversation every week on Wednesdays.  Just follow this link: meet.google.com/xho-cbni-pkf Wanna see our tools in action? No problem! And ask us: how to image more drives, faster why replacing a dozen imagers with one gets a whole lab to acquire evidence faster how to create an automated workflow that includes a hardware imager   how to extract and remove unknown Read more…

By Yulia Samoteykina, ago
Atola Insight Forensic

Insight Forensic 4.16 released with E01 segmented images

Current global yet temporary circumstances have not impeded Atola dev team. We are releasing Atola Insight Forensic 4.16 today! The software update includes two new major features: E01 segmented images (E01, E02, etc) full support of SAS drives with non-standard logical sector sizes: 520, 524, 528 bytes and so on E01 segmented images We are grateful to our customers for valuable feedback. It is your feedback that got us focused on the development of E01 segment (chunk) functionality for Atola Insight Forensic. We know some of you have been waiting for the feature for quite some time. Finally, it has arrived! When selecting E01 file as a target, you will Read more…

By Vitaliy Mokosiy, ago
Business

How we create Atola products

Hi! I am Vitaliy Mokosiy, CTO in Atola Technology. I have been working here with great enjoyment and enthusiasm since 2008. Today I am taking this opportunity to shed light on the development process of Atola products, how it drives me as well as our whole dev team. We proudly presented Atola TaskForce to the forensic community almost two years ago. While the volume of digital evidence inevitably continues to grow, every day TaskForce imagers are out there helping save a great deal of time for our customers by imaging at 15 TB per hour of total performance. From a user’s perspective it is simple: you plug 12 SATA evidence Read more…

By Vitaliy Mokosiy, ago
Atola TaskForce

TaskForce imaging speed

Atola TaskForce is designed to be the fastest forensic imager. It allows imaging multiple drives simultaneously at the overall speed of 15 TB/hour. The individual imaging sessions run at the top native speeds of most drives. To test TaskForce imaging speed, we used various models of SSD, HDD & USB devices and compared the performance achieved with the read speed in sequential mode (sectors read and written to in linear order) at userbenchmark.com. NB Imaging speed is limited by the speed of the slowest of the devices, participating in the imaging session. Therefore, the slowest of the two speeds (either the read speed of the source or the write speed Read more…

By Olga Milishenko, ago