We’ve imaged lots of removable media over the past year (~ 400, according to Victoria’s stats), and I’ve also done a fair amount of forensic imaging of material on-site with donors (live acquisition) . One aspect of our ‘forensic’ armoury that has not been subject to so much testing is the imaging of whole hard disks at BEAM. So-called ‘dead’ acquisitions.
In the past few months two new accessions have presented us with an additional four hard disks. This is excellent news, as I have finally had the chance to use our forensic computer’s Ultrabay (write-blocking device) to image a real ‘collection hard disk’. Everything went smoothly. So far so good.
-Susan Thomas