Atola Technology introduces iSCSI support for imaging remote drives in its flagship TaskForce and TaskForce 2 forensic hardware imagers.
Firmware update 2025.4 also features numerous improvements for reassembling and imaging RAIDs and a built-in Hex viewer for byte-level analysis.
“We’re proud to release one of the biggest updates in Atola’s history,” says Vitaliy Mokosiy, CTO at Atola Technology. “The firmware will add muscle to your TaskForce in many ways. We’ve enabled remote drive imaging via iSCSI, doubled NVMe-to-NVMe imaging speed, introduced an interactive Hex viewer for all drives, image files, and logical files, and added support for imaging of Synology NAS RAID with one missing device.”
iSCSI Support for Imaging Remote Drives
TaskForce now supports imaging remote drives connected via iSCSI. This is especially useful when a drive is soldered to the motherboard or cannot be physically removed from a computer due to legal, logistical, or technical constraints.
With iSCSI, the remote system exposes its drive as a network-attached block device, which TaskForce detects and can image like any locally connected storage.
To help users quickly set up remote drives on Linux as iSCSI targets, Atola Technology provides a free, ready-to-use script at GitHub.
Built-in Hex Viewer
A new built-in Hex viewer is now available for all drives, image files, and logical files. It lets users dive deeper into the data at the byte level to identify unusual data patterns or analyze file structure in depth.
The Hex viewer features seamless scrolling and an option to jump to a specific sector of a drive or an image file.
During logical acquisition or browsing files, Hex Viewer provides the ability to see all the bytes of a file or examine its specific portion using the ‘Go to offset’ command.
RAID Module Improvements
New features of the RAID module are designed to ensure faster, more accurate detection and offer more flexibility, especially in complex cases.
- Support for Synology NAS RAIDs with a missing device: TaskForce automatically detects if a member of Synology NAS RAID is missing and rebuilds an array anyway using parity information from other devices included in the RAID.
- Pause/Resume during RAID autodetection: It provides more flexibility for finding complex array configuration.
- New RAID cheat sheet: It is displayed when autodetection fails and helps recover configurations manually.
- Max RAID members increased from 16 to 64 to handle large, enterprise-grade arrays.
- Smarter auto-reassembly when the Master Boot Record is offset.
- Reduced memory usage during intensive RAID operations.
Enhanced Imaging Speed, Case Management, and Connectivity
With the new firmware update, Atola TaskForce and TaskForce 2 have received a variety of other improvements. Here are some of them:
- 2x faster NVMe-to-NVMe imaging: Significantly speeds up the acquisition process.
- New template variables: {EVIDENCE_ID}, {NUM+} for dynamic naming. This improvement automates routine when a file exists in a folder and autoincrements a corresponding part of the file name.
- Case management: Added fields for Evidence ID and Evidence Examiner.
- Diagnostics: Improved detection of specialized partitions, like Microsoft Reserved and macOS Boot.
- Wiping: Added an option to format drives to exFAT after wiping.
- Network: Full IPv6 support and improved behavior when connecting to password-free shares.
All enhancements and fixes included in the firmware update 2025.4 are listed in the product changelog.
The firmware update 2025.4 is already available for download at atola.com.
About Atola TaskForce
Atola TaskForce is a high-performance forensic hardware imager with 18 ports, capable of running 12+ parallel imaging, hashing, or wiping sessions at 15 TB/hour cumulative speed. Atola TaskForce supports automated RAID reassembly and imaging with a missing device, has Express mode for time-saving self-launching imaging, and provides Web API for automating forensic data acquisition workflow.
About Atola TaskForce 2
Atola TaskForce 2 is a new version of the TaskForce forensic imager, designed primarily for in-lab usage. The new device has 26 ports, including four M.2 NVMe ports, and can image 25+ drives simultaneously, even the damaged ones, reaching 25 TB/hour cumulative speed. TaskForce 2 has all the features of TaskForce, including RAID and damaged drives support, Express mode, and Web API for workflow automation.
About Atola Technology
Atola Technology is an innovative company based in the Vancouver area, Canada, specializing in creating forensic imaging hardware tools for the global forensic market.
Atola’s engineers – including its founder and CEO Dmitry Postrigan – have strong expertise in storage media and data recovery, and focus on creating highly efficient and user-friendly forensic imagers.
To learn more, visit us at atola.com and find us on LinkedIn.
