Storage Forensics and File System Analysis

An analyst notices that a file on an NTFS volume occupies 4096 bytes on disk but its actual data is only 100 bytes. The extra space contains remnants of a previously deleted file. What is this extra space called?

An analyst discovers a hidden partition on a hard drive that does not appear in the standard MBR partition table. The drive uses GPT partitioning. Which area of the disk should be examined to find evidence of a hidden partition?

During a forensic investigation of a hard disk, the investigator finds that the partition table is missing. The disk was previously partitioned using GPT. Which area of the disk should be examined to recover the GPT partition table?

Which TWO of the following are valid methods to hide data on an NTFS file system without using external tools?

An analyst discovers that a Windows system has hidden data in the Host Protected Area (HPA) of the hard drive. Which tool or method can be used to detect and access the HPA?

A forensic investigator recovers a hard drive from a suspect's computer. The drive is detected as 120 GB in BIOS, but forensic tools report only 100 GB of addressable space. Which data hiding technique is MOST likely being used?

A forensic examiner is analyzing a RAID 5 array consisting of three disks. One disk has failed and is not available. The remaining two disks contain data and parity. Which technique can be used to reconstruct the missing disk's data and recover the original data?

A forensic investigator examines a hard drive and needs to recover deleted files. Which tool is specifically designed for file carving by scanning raw data for file headers and footers without relying on the file system?

An investigator needs to recover deleted files from a USB drive formatted with FAT32. Which of the following techniques would be most effective, assuming the files have not been overwritten?

Which THREE of the following are types of slack space that can contain hidden data on a hard disk?

During a forensic examination of a solid-state drive (SSD), you notice that files deleted several months ago cannot be recovered using traditional file carving tools. Which SSD feature is MOST likely preventing recovery?

An analyst retrieves a forensic image of a hard drive and discovers that the size reported by the operating system is smaller than the actual physical capacity. The extra space is not accessible through standard partition tools. This hidden area is MOST likely:

During an investigation, an analyst recovers a file from unallocated space that contains fragments of a deleted document. The file size is 512 bytes, but the cluster size of the volume is 4096 bytes. What is the term for the unused bytes between the end of the file and the end of the last cluster?

During a forensic analysis of an NTFS volume, an investigator finds a file that appears to be hidden. Which NTFS feature allows data to be stored in a file without affecting the file's visible size in the directory listing?

During a forensic analysis of an SSD, the analyst encounters challenges due to TRIM and wear-leveling. Which TWO statements accurately describe the impact of these features on data recovery?

During a forensic investigation, you need to acquire the RAM of a running Linux system. Which tool is specifically designed for memory acquisition on Linux?

During a forensic examination of a solid-state drive (SSD), the analyst notices that the TRIM command was enabled. What challenge does this pose for data recovery?

An investigator is examining a FAT32 filesystem and needs to recover a deleted file. In FAT32, the directory entry for a deleted file has the first byte of the filename set to 0xE5. What does this indicate?

An investigator needs to recover a deleted partition from a disk that originally used an MBR partition table. Which tool can scan the disk for lost partitions and rebuild the partition table?

An analyst is examining a Windows 10 system and discovers a file in the $Recycle.bin folder with a name like '$RABCDEF.txt'. The analyst wants to recover the original file path and deletion date. Which forensic artifact should the analyst examine?

A forensic examiner finds a file on an NTFS volume that appears to have data hidden in its alternate data stream. The file's size is reported as 10 KB, but the volume's cluster size is 4 KB. How many clusters of file slack could potentially contain hidden data in the primary stream?

Which TWO of the following are valid techniques for acquiring RAM in a Windows system?

An examiner is analyzing an NTFS volume and suspects that a suspect hid data using Alternate Data Streams (ADS). Which tool or method is MOST appropriate to list all ADS on the volume?

During a forensic examination of a Linux ext4 file system, an investigator runs the `ls -i` command and sees inode numbers. They need to examine the inode structure. Which command should they use to display detailed inode information?

During a forensic examination of a Windows system, an analyst finds a file that appears to be zero bytes in size when viewed in Windows Explorer, but the file's properties show a size on disk of 4 KB. What is the most likely explanation?

During a forensic investigation, you encounter a RAID 5 array consisting of three 1 TB disks. The array is failed, and you need to reconstruct the original data. Which of the following approaches is MOST appropriate for data recovery?

An analyst is examining a USB drive that appears to have a smaller capacity than expected. The drive is detected as 8 GB but only 7 GB is accessible. Which of the following is the most likely cause?

An analyst recovers a disk image from a Linux server that used ext4. The image shows a superblock backup at multiple offsets. Which dd command would correctly extract the backup superblock located at offset 32768 bytes?

Which tool is specifically designed for file carving and can recover files based on headers and footers without relying on file system metadata?

What is the primary purpose of the Host Protected Area (HPA) on a hard disk drive?

An analyst is recovering deleted files from a FAT32 file system. The file system uses a cluster size of 4096 bytes. The first cluster of a deleted file is cluster 100. Which structure contains the chain of clusters for this file?

During a forensic examination of an NTFS drive, an analyst runs 'fsutil usn readjournal C:' and observes a large number of USN journal entries for a specific file after a certain date. The file's $MFT record shows a last modified timestamp far earlier than the journal entries. What does this discrepancy suggest?

An investigator notes that a file on an NTFS volume has a resident data size of 900 bytes, but the $DATA attribute lists an allocated size of 1024 bytes. What does this indicate?

An investigator acquires an SSD from a laptop that has been turned off for 24 hours. The suspect recently deleted several incriminating files. Using a forensic imager, the investigator creates a bit-for-bit copy. However, when analyzing the image, the deleted files' data appears to be zeros. What is the MOST likely cause?

A forensic analyst is examining a RAID 5 array consisting of three disks. One disk has failed and has been replaced. The array is rebuilt automatically. However, the analyst needs to recover deleted files that existed before the rebuild. What is the MOST significant challenge in this scenario?