On November 21 Atola Technology released a firmware update for Atola TaskForce, a high-performance forensic imager capable of running 12+ parallel imaging sessions at 15 TB/hour cumulative speed.
With the new firmware version 2022.10, TaskForce users can:
- Unlock and image drives with APFS volumes
- Automatically reassemble RAID arrays, even with a missing member
- Securely wipe NVMe drives
- Create and manage several user profiles for one TaskForce unit
“We are proud to announce these highly anticipated features, which we created to further help forensic experts in their day-to-day work,” said Vitaliy Mokosiy, CTO at Atola Technology. “Our customers from all over the world asked us a lot about APFS support and user management system for better control of their work with evidence. As for autodetection of RAIDs with a missing device, it is another improvement to the RAID configuration autodetection module that we are adding to increase our customers’ chances of reassembling and imaging such RAIDs. Today, we are happy to present these new and enhanced features.”
APFS Support
With TaskForce firmware update 2022.10, the Atola team has added support for the APFS file system, created by Apple. Now, TaskForce lets you unlock APFS volumes with a known password or recovery key and create a physical or logical image of the Apple device you are processing.
The RAID module in TaskForce also supports physical and logical imaging of arrays with unencrypted APFS volumes.
Automatic RAID reassembly, even with missing drive
Atola TaskForce can now automatically reassemble RAID 5, even when you don’t know that one drive in the array is missing.
Powered by an enhanced RAID autodetection algorithm, TaskForce identifies the RAID type and checks millions of possible RAID configurations to find a suitable one.
If one of the array members is missing, TaskForce now automatically detects that and reconstructs the whole array anyway using parity information that is distributed across the drives.
NVMe drives secure wiping with Format NVM
With updated functionality, Atola TaskForce now securely wipes M.2 NVMe drives using Format NVM method, which utilizes SSD controller’s internal wiping algorithm.
Our users can choose between two erase modes, both of which follow NVMe standard: Data Erase and Cryptographic Erase.
User management system
For those forensic examiners who need to lock their TaskForce unit with a password or protect their cases from colleagues with whom they share one TaskForce unit, Atola has developed a user management system.
With this update, TaskForce users can:
- Create one or several user profiles.
- Protect user profiles with passwords.
- Grant access to TaskForce only for authenticated users.
- See and manage cases independently.
- Automatically lock TaskForce screen after a certain time of inactivity.
When user management is enabled, TaskForce asks the user to enter their password, while colleagues who share one TaskForce can’t see each other’s cases and interrupt each other’s tasks.
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 Technology
Atola Technology is an innovative company based in Vancouver, 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.
