Standalone drive cloning software

[chickencow]

Hi everyone. Very interesting place here. I have no involvement with computer forensics; I found CFW through web searches for an app that I can use to clone my HDDs. My search was surprisingly fruitless, but it looks like this is the right crowd for my question.

To date, I've been using Acronis software, which I realize does not actually clone drives (ie. it is not a bit-for-bit copy). This has been fine, but I recently encrypted my drives and this has closed the door on just about every app I can find.

I've read several threads here, and from what I've seen I can say that I don't necessarily need forensic-quality cloning, in the sense that I don't care about hashes or the like. My needs are not forensic -- I just need to be able to create backups of my drives.

The trick of course is that the entire drive is encrypted -- everything but the boot record, obviously -- so I really do need something that will just go out and copy everything it finds. No "helpful" software that tries to analyze what it finds, no compression, etc. Just find a byte, copy a byte, lather, rinse, repeat.

I've followed links from here to FTK software and a few others, and while they look like they would indeed do the job, they're way too expensive for my personal needs (no doubt in part because they also include tons of other features that I don't need).

I run WinXP, but what I really need is a bootable solution that operates independently of the OS. Considering that the OS itself is encrypted, this is actually a necessity. I'm an old-school CP/M / DOS guy, been fiddling with this stuff for 25 odd years, so I'm not at all afraid of Linux or command-line based stuff. I just need something that will work. And I'm certainly not opposed to commercial software (i.e. costs money), just not to the tune of $3,500.

(Freeware / open-source is certainly preferred, of course ...)

Any advice for this situation?

[PreferredUser]

dd or any of the variants will make a bit-by-bit copy. Helix, Cain, etc. all include some variant(s) of dd and are bootable.

[ilikemycomputer]

You may also be able to use the 'partimage' command on a Linux distro. This command saves a given partition onto an .img file and you have the option to compress it with gzip or bzip2. You can also set it to break the image file into smaller files, so they can be burned to cds or dvds. You can also use the command to restore an image file.

http : //www . partimage . org/

-ilikemycomputer

[xaberx]

[Blackegg]

Hardcopy II by VOOM Technologies is an excellent stand alone, bit by bit HDD copy hardware. We own one and it is great. It does more than just copy/clone as well.
Blackegg...
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[PreferredUser]

[novatech]

I realise this is an old post, but the following link should provide useful info for anyone else have the same requirement:

http : // forums . truecrypt.org/viewtopic.php?t=20353

Rgds
Novatech

[obnray29]

Is anyone using these other bit-by-bit copy programs in the field and having it admissable in court?

[cybercop]

As long as the hash of the copy is the same as the hash from the original, the method used to copy it doesn't matter. All that does matter is that it is an EXACT copy.