Final project Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Final project - Lab Report Example Live data acquisition is a process in which computer forensic experts make a copy of the digital evidence, from a digital device, by running a program (University at Buffalo, n.d). In this process, data is acquired while the computer belonging to the suspect is on. Live data acquisition is necessitated by particular factors, such as prevention of permanent data loss, disk encryption or significant losses to the affected people, when the computer is switched off. It is noteworthy pointing out that live data acquisition does not guarantee repeatability. On the contrary, static data acquisition involves making a copy of the evidential data when the computer is turned off. Statistic acquisition mainly takes place when storage disk is write-protected by the suspect. Unlike live acquisition, static data acquisition is characterized by high level of repeatability hence the importance placed on this approach (University at Buffalo, n.d). Ideally, forensic experts make a copy of the original data in order to use the copy for further analysis. Physical drive is another commonly used term in computer forensics. Physical drive refers to the hardware component used in most computer gadgets for storing data (Pachghare, 2009). Physical drives can be in form of magnetic tapes or disk drives, which are tangible and can be detached from electronic gadgets. Contrastingly, logical drive refers to the various partitions that exist in the physical drive. In many computers, users partition the existing physical drive into several portions that represent ‘independent’ storage units (Pachghare, 2009). However, these storage units, known as logical drives, are part of the main hard drive in the computer. File Allocation Table (FAT) is an older system used by various operating systems to track data stored in the hard drive. Ideally, data generated by use of computer programs is stored in bytes, which are clustered in different locations on the storage disk (Marshall University,