Forensic Explorer

Searching for incriminating evidence on a computer involves analyzing countless files, looking for deleted data and sorting everything in a logical manner. Forensic Explorer was created specifically for this task. The software enables you to analyze huge amounts of data and analyze your findings in one or more cases. It comes with enhanced file sorting and filtering capabilities, keyword searching features and much more.

The program is not free, but you can request a free 14-day trial. Installing Forensic Explorer takes roughly one minute. The software's recommended hardware configuration involves an Intel Core i7 processor and 8 GB of RAM, but it is known to work on modest systems as well.

The user interface is divided into multiple sections, which can be accessed via navigation tabs. The Evidence section is where you may create new cases. You can assign files, image galleries and local or external drives to individual cases. It is also possible to assign an investigator to a case.

Once you create a case and add files, you can analyze the data, search for keywords, indexes and bookmarks, generate reports and more. The imported files can be analyzed in the File System section, where they are displayed like on an explorer window. All files are sorted automatically, based on their type. You can also explore various categories, in a different tree structure. Even if you import an entire hard drive, you will find its contents neatly categorized. You can explore deleted items, system files, email files, modified items and much more.

Besides exploring the gathered evidence, you can also perform a series of advanced operations, like file carving, signature analysis, accessing shadow volumes and more. You can start one of these tasks by clicking the appropriate options, located on the program's toolbar. Different options are made available in the other sections of the interface. For example, the Registry section consists of several options, for exploring NT user hives, as well as system, software and SAM hives.