Write Blockers needed for floppy and cdrom?

The answer is no, you don't need a write blocker.

Not needed but if you are super paranoid

CD drive - IDE write blocker

USB Floppy driver - USB Write blocker

But as said before, not needed D

Since the write blocking mechanism on a floppy drive can fail, just attempt to do a write to a read only floppy to verify it, note that in your bench notes, then you can use the floppy drive without worries.

thanks guys )

Write block of usb floppy drives using a hardware write blocker is suspect. I have not been able to get it to work with the Tableau.

Are write blockers for floppy and cdrom drives really needed? I know that floppy disks can write block themselves and cdroms are read only memory. Is any other software or hardware write blockers needed to have the evidence passable in a court of law and if so does anyone know of any good write blockers for floppy and cdrom?

It looks to me as if you've answered your own question…

Are write blockers for floppy and cdrom drives really needed? I know that floppy disks can write block themselves and cdroms are read only memory.

CD-ROMs may be read-only memory, but CD-ROM drives aren't. You can do quite a lot of reconfiguration of a CD-ROM drive, sometimes even mess it up irretrievably to someone who can't 'reset' it. For example, updating CD-ROM firmware is a possibility, though rather unlikely.

Thus, in the very unlikely event (?) that you image CD/DVDs with a CD/DVD device also associated with the case, you should probably be extra careful.

Be careful of the terminology, here. If the CD/DVD drive is incapable of writing, then you are likely OK. If not, then the disk, itself, could be closed or open (rewritable).

Most people use the term CDROM to refer to any or all of CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, etc. If you are unsure, a write blocker or a drive without write capability might be essential.

For example, many of the digital photo disk kiosks use rewritable media and don't close them so that you can add photos, later. These would be risky.

Also (and I don't mean to preach, here), be sure that you don't have the Windows default autorun turned for CD/DVDs and USB devices. I had a case, once, where the suspect was also an expert on disk drives and when we seized his laptop it had a DVD on it. Examination of the DVD revealed that if it had been inserted into a Windows XP/2000/2003 system with the autorun enabled, it would have not only overwritten itself, but corrupted the host system as well.

As for floppies, while it is possible to mechanically write protect them using the write protect tab, I try to avoid any suggestion that I might have screwed up by using a USB-attached floppy and write protector. It might be overkill but it saves me having to go into details of how to write protect floppies in deposition.