Belkasoft X Forensic vs Exterro FTK Imager

Belkasoft X Forensic acquires, analyzes, and reports digital evidence from computers, mobile devices, RAM, cars, drones, and cloud sources. Its acquisition options include DD/E01 imaging, iOS checkm8 and agent-based acquisition, and several Android methods. Analysis features include timeline and connection graph views, SQLite recovery, hash-set analysis, file carving, and picture and video analysis. The software can examine UFED and GrayKey images, virtual machines, Amazon S3-based images, Berla car exports, and data from services including Google Drive, iCloud, Microsoft 365, WhatsApp, and Telegram. Reports can be produced in formats such as HTML, XML, CSV, PDF, Excel, Word, ProjectVIC JSON, and Relativity Short Message Format. Colleagues can view shared findings with the free Evidence Reader, whether or not X Forensic is installed. The product is self-hosted and offered to government customers only. Its license is perpetual, with optional annual software maintenance and support; pricing is provided by quote. A 30-day trial requires internet access. Trial reports contain half of randomly selected artifacts, and several acquisition, decryption, virtual-machine, and command-line automation features are excluded. The company describes it as suited to digital forensic laboratories at federal and state-level law-enforcement agencies.

Exterro FTK Imager is a forensic imaging and preview tool for acquiring and preserving digital evidence. It creates full disk images in multiple industry-standard formats and verifies them with MD5 or SHA-1 hashes. Investigators can preview files and folders before acquisition, capture volatile RAM and registry data from a live device, and read or write common forensic image formats. Files can be exported for further analysis in FTK Forensic Toolkit. Supported acquisition sources include Windows and Linux hard drives, CDs and DVDs, thumb drives and other USB devices. The tool runs on Windows only, though it can image a Linux device; it does not collect directly from phones or other mobile devices. The free FTK Imager plan is listed at free. FTK Imager Pro costs $499 a year and adds encryption-aware workflows, iOS advanced logical collection, faster preview and targeted acquisition. Exterro identifies incident response and DFIR teams, law enforcement, forensic examiners, and corporate security and HR investigators as intended users.