Data Recovery Digest

Digital forensics, also known as digital forensic science, is a growing field that revolves around the investigation and recovery of raw digital data. When a file is deleted from a computer's hard drive, a remote server or any other destination, it's not actually deleted – it's simply renamed and deemed inaccessible through the standard means.

That's where the advanced tools of digital forensics come into play – and SysTools provides many different utilities to help you get started. Whether you're trying to recover lost photos from an SD card or even if you're just curious about the topic, these tools – many of which are available for free – will help jumpstart your next investigation.

Email Forensics

SysTools' email forensics utilities cover every type of email, including the traditional web-based messages, desktop-based emails, cloud-based emails and even past messages that have been archived and imaged for safekeeping. They support all of the most popular platforms, too, including AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Live, Yahoo, and even more.

File Viewers

File viewers are a staple of any digital forensics specialist. SysTools offers file viewers that support many different file types, including BKF, SQL, OST, Outlook PST, Exchange EDB, OLM, MSG, EML, MBOX, DXL, E01, DMG and AOL PFC. They also have a dedicated Driver Viewer to scan the contents of drivers and their related files.

PDF Management

The Portable Document Format, or PDF, was pioneered by Adobe in the early 1990s. It's since become the industry standard for preserving and presenting evidence within a litigation. As such, SysTools offers a comprehensive suite of PDF management utilities that include:

- A PDF Unlocker to remove printing, copying and editing restrictions

- PDF Recovery to repair and recovery data from corrupt PDF files

- PDF Split and Merge to merge multiple PDFs or split larger ones into smaller parts

- PDF Toolbox for compression, conversion and extraction of text or images from PDF files

SysTools also provides utilities for adding and removing PDF watermarks and more.

File Locators, Reporters and Analyzers

Rounding out their line of digital forensics tools are numerous file finders, locators, reporters, and analyzers. Locators exist for programs like Outlook and Outlook Express, Exchange, LotusNotes and more, thereby making it easy to find individual files, and their Outlook Reporters – compatible with both PST and OST files – can scan your files as well as the details within.

SysTools also offers a useful NTFS Log Analyzer, which supports scanning, loading and viewing of complete log reports on any NTFS partition or drive. Like many of the programs mentioned above, the SysTools NTFS Log Analyzer is available from their website as freeware.

How to Find Out More

While many of these products are available as standalone, free products, others exist only as paid versions or as complementary utilities to other SysTools solutions. For more information on any of these products, or to download them and put them to use on your own system, please visit their official website at {{https://www.systoolsgroup.com/digital-forensics.html|www.systools.com}}l.