Evaluating A Selection of Tools for Extraction of Forensic Data: Disk ...

4.0 INTRODUCTION
Chapter 4
Research Findings
The Literature review in Chapter 2 has paved the path for standardising the testing
requirements and a list of detailed assertions is derived from the requirements. Chapter
3 outlines the research methodology that is adopted in the various research phases to
answer the research questions. The literature review and research methodology
provide guidance in terms of how to approach the evaluation of disk imaging tools.
The main objective of Chapter 4 is to report and summarise the findings from the
performance testing of disk imaging tools.
The data collection, processing and analysis proceeded according to the
specifications described in Chapter 3. This chapter reports the variations in the
research specifications and how each evaluated disk imaging tool is performed in each
test case. The collected results of the test case are summarised and analysed. This
chapter discusses different aspects of the tool testing stage. Collected data is analysed
using GA to study the gap between the testing requirements and the actual
performance of the tool. The collected research data is organised following the steps
defined in Chapter 3 to ascertain whether the data fits the pre-specified model so that
the research question could be answered.
This chapter firstly reports and discusses the alteration of methodologies for
practical research based on the benchmark methods specified in Chapter 3. The two
different environments for hardware and software configuration are discussed and
their implications for the tool testing are also reviewed. There are three testing disk
imaging tools and 18 test cases. Three selected testing disk imaging tools have been
tested in different test cases and the individual report of each tool has been generated
for each test case. Some test cases may only be applied for one or two of the tools. In
the last section, the testing results for each disk imaging tool are presented and the
comparison of the test results for three tested tools is carried out.
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