Exterro FTK Imager vs Plaso

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.

Plaso is a Python-based engine for creating timelines used in digital forensic analysis. Its log2timeline tool extracts events from files, directories, storage-media images, or devices and stores them in a Plaso storage file. The psort tool can filter and sort that data and run automatic analysis. Other command-line tools include image_export, pinfo, and psteal. Documented inputs include Windows event logs and registry data, browser histories, SQLite databases, text logs, and cloud audit logs from AWS CloudTrail, Azure Activity, Google Cloud, and Microsoft 365. Plaso can create a CSV timeline from a storage image using psteal with dynamic output; listed formats also include JSON, JSON Lines, KML, TLN, XLSX, OpenSearch, and Timesketch. The framework supports additional parsers, analysis plug-ins, and scripts for forensic tasks. Documented analysis plug-ins include VirusTotal, NSRL server, and hash tagging. Plaso is free, with no commercial plan or usage limits stated. The project recommends packaged releases for general use and a version no older than six months.