Legacy Forensics: An Emerging Challenge

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges of analyzing legacy storage devices in digital forensics, exemplified by efforts to recover data from a 1983 Bernoulli Drive, highlighting technical difficulties and implications for forensic science.

Contribution

It presents a case study on accessing a 1983 Bernoulli Drive, illustrating the broader forensic challenges posed by outdated storage technology.

Findings

Legacy devices are increasingly incompatible with modern systems.

Technical methods can partially recover data from vintage hardware.

Legacy devices pose significant forensic challenges for law enforcement.

Abstract

With the passage of time and as new types of storage devices are introduced into the marketplace, contemporary devices will slowly lose their compatibility with current operating systems and PC hardware. As a result, such legacy devices will pose an analytical challenge to the field of digital forensics. Dated technology, while still fully functional, is becoming increasingly incompatible with most contemporary computing hardware and software and thus cannot be properly examined in present-day digital forensic environments. This fact will not be lost on those who utilize legacy hardware to commit criminal acts. This paper describes the technical challenge of accessing legacy devices by describing an effort to resuscitate a Bernoulli Drive, a portable storage device manufactured in 1983 by Iomega Corporation. A number of lessons-learned are provided and the implication of legacy devices to digital forensic science is discussed.