Hard Drives with Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) Connectors

Image via Wikipedia

If you are a first responder, then you may want to get yourself a couple of ZIF to IDE adapters, in case you don't have them yet. These new tiny laptops have become very popular and lots of them use hard drives or solid state drives with ZIF connectors. In situations when there is a limited time available to pull out the drive or suitable adapter is not available, I often use Helix3 Live CD.

This option works well when the computer I preview has a CD/DVD Drive. The problem is that not all of these new and portable laptops have one. Fujitsu Siemens AMILO MINI is a perfect example of the portable laptop that uses ZIF HDD and has no CD/DVD Drive built-in.

Then the options are:

1. Have a USB flash drive with bootable Helix3 or any other forensic Live CD. It is relatively easy to create such device with UNetbootin or by hand (just google for "Helix Linux on a USB thumb drive").

2. Have a portable external USB CD/DVD Drive with you all the time and use it to boot the suspect’s machine from the Live CD of your choice.

3. Get yourself ZIF to IDE adapter or buy the 'Hard Drive ZIF Adapter' from Digital Intelligence guys. It also comes with different cables for Toshiba and Hitachi drives.