Tools for mounting images
A while ago, I posted on mounting DD images, and I wanted to provide an updated list of some of the tools that you can use to do just that on a Windows systems.
When would you need to use such tools? I like to use tools such as these as in most cases, you can do your analysis whilst goin' commando (sans dongle, as it were), and in many cases, do a great deal more deep analysis than you could using one of the commercial forensic analysis suites. In most cases, it's as simple as mounting the image and using your tools, many of which are CLI and can be run via a batch file. Mounting the image gives you access to most (be cognizant of permissions issues) of the files in the file system without that system being live and without requiring a password to log into the system (as with LiveView), simply because you're not actually booting the system, you're just reading the file structure.
I won't got into any particular detail about these tools, as I want to simply provide them here as a means of identifying those that are available.
VDKWin (free) - Excellent UI for VDK.
ImDisk (free) - installs as a Control Panel applet
SMARTMount (pay) - Andy Rosen's superb mounting utility; requires a dongle, mounts raw, SMART, EWF, SAW, VMWare virtual disk format images, and detects a wide variety of file systems.
P2Explorer (free, requires registration) - Lots of cool features, mounts a variety of formats.
Captain Nemo (pay) - Mounts raw and RAID Reconstructor images from Linux, MS, and Novell systems.
Other similar tools that may be of use:
MKS Software's mount utility
MS's Virtual CD-ROM drive from XP (1, 2, 3)
Mounting ISO images on Vista/Win7
WinCDEmu - mount ISO images
For those of you doing live response, the guys over at CommandLineKungFu posted a great blog on determining information about mounted drives and shares. Some of the tools I've written and provided on the DVD that accompanies WFA 2/e implements similar functionality as the wmic commands that Ed posted, but in most cases going just a bit further.
When would you need to use such tools? I like to use tools such as these as in most cases, you can do your analysis whilst goin' commando (sans dongle, as it were), and in many cases, do a great deal more deep analysis than you could using one of the commercial forensic analysis suites. In most cases, it's as simple as mounting the image and using your tools, many of which are CLI and can be run via a batch file. Mounting the image gives you access to most (be cognizant of permissions issues) of the files in the file system without that system being live and without requiring a password to log into the system (as with LiveView), simply because you're not actually booting the system, you're just reading the file structure.
I won't got into any particular detail about these tools, as I want to simply provide them here as a means of identifying those that are available.
VDKWin (free) - Excellent UI for VDK.
ImDisk (free) - installs as a Control Panel applet
SMARTMount (pay) - Andy Rosen's superb mounting utility; requires a dongle, mounts raw, SMART, EWF, SAW, VMWare virtual disk format images, and detects a wide variety of file systems.
P2Explorer (free, requires registration) - Lots of cool features, mounts a variety of formats.
Captain Nemo (pay) - Mounts raw and RAID Reconstructor images from Linux, MS, and Novell systems.
Other similar tools that may be of use:
MKS Software's mount utility
MS's Virtual CD-ROM drive from XP (1, 2, 3)
Mounting ISO images on Vista/Win7
WinCDEmu - mount ISO images
For those of you doing live response, the guys over at CommandLineKungFu posted a great blog on determining information about mounted drives and shares. Some of the tools I've written and provided on the DVD that accompanies WFA 2/e implements similar functionality as the wmic commands that Ed posted, but in most cases going just a bit further.