DeepSpar Guardonix for Digital Forensics Professionals

DeepSpar Data Recovery Systems released a product for digital forensics professionals: Guardonix.

USB3.0 writeblocker and stabilizer
A writeblocker which will not allow data acquisition process to be interrupted due to intermittent read instabilities.

Standard edition works with any software
Any Windows-based software works with Guardonix, as if it was working directly with the original source drive.

Stabilizes USB connection
USB protocol requires the PC and storage device to be in constant synchronization with one another. If the storage device fails to respond quickly enough, or responds irregularly due to bad sectors or other read instability issues then it may lose its current state and become desynchronized with the PC, causing Windows to freeze, crash, and/or drop the USB storage device.

Guardonix hardware stands between the PC and storage device, making sure that the connection to the PC is always well-maintained, regardless of what’s happening with the storage device. This way even if the storage device becomes desynchronized, only its connection to it hardware will be reinitialized, which will not have any impact on the PC, allowing data acquisition to proceed without interruption. Guardonix hardware maintains a live connection even if the storage device is entirely disconnected during imaging.

Blocks write commands
Guardonix hardware only forwards commands which will not change the contents of the attached USB drive, guaranteeing write blocking on the hardware level.

Shows status information
The current reading speed, sector address being read, drive status (Idle, Processing, Not Responding, Disconnected), bad sectors, and write attempts are shown in real time.

Professional edition: Speeds up dad sector processing
Instead of allowing the drive to get stuck retrying bad sectors for tens of seconds or minutes at a time, Guardonix cuts bad sector processing within a few seconds, dramatically improving imaging speed of drives with bad sectors and reducing drive degradation from internal read retries. This functionality is critical when working with drives which have a non-trivial number of bad sectors.

Automatically repowers drive as needed
As a last resort, if the source drive suddenly stops responding to all commands, Guardonix will automatically repower it to continue the data acquisition process.

Graphical display of speed and sector map
Real time sector map shows good sectors, bad sectors, and write attempts, giving clear feedback on how data acquisition is proceeding. The speed is also displayed graphically to show how consistently the drive is reading, allowing for the time-to-completion to be estimated.

Blocks filesystem mounting
Optionally prevents Windows from mounting the filesystem (assigning drive letters), saving time and eliminating the possibility of drive errors causing Windows to hang during mounting.