blearghhh
New Member
Good point, but modern Windows OS's don't update NTFS file access times any more (for performance reasons). However, other things can happen when a drive is mounted (e.g. Recycle Bin might be created for the current user.) Personally, I would use "dd" under Linux to make a byte-for-byte copy of the drive, without mounting any partitions. I wouldn't risk connecting the original drive to a Windows PC, because of auto-mounting and the possibility of writing to the drive and overwriting data (as you said).
According to a computer security guy I spoke to at length once, it is absolutely essential under the commonly accepted rules for evidence that no changes whatsoever be made to the original disk. Doing so means that it's basically inadmissable for evidence.
Labs have specialized hardware that you hook your drive up to and it automatically makes a bit for bit copy of everything on a new drive, while preventing writes to the drive at the lowest level, so you can document that you've never made any changes to any information on there.
Then you use your forensics software to examine the information on the drive image and do whatever to it.