Guardonix USB 3.0 Writeblocker

Guardonix USB 3.0 Writeblocker a feature-rich writeblocker which enables Windows applications to work with damaged/unstable storage devices, substantially accelerates flash storage acquisitions. Guardonix hardware stands between the PC and storage device, making sure that the connection to the PC is always well-maintained, regardless of the storage device status. This way even if the storage device becomes desynchronized, only its connection to Guardonix hardware will be reinitialized, which will not have any impact on the PC, allowing data acquisition to proceed without interruption. Guardonix hardware maintains a live connection even if the storage device is physically disconnected during imaging.

Standard Edition

• Enables forensic acquisition of USB storage devices by blocking all write commands to preserve data integrity.
• Helps prevent Windows from freezing, crashing, and/or dropping USB storage devices due to bad sectors or other read instability issues.
• Works bus powered with all storage devices except the most power hungry HDDs.
• Allows connecting the source drive to an unpowered USB port, reducing the risk of damage from short circuits and electrostatic shock.

Professional Edition

• Accelerates acquisition speed of SSDs and other fast flash storage devices by an average of 30%, compared to a direct, writeblocker-free connection to USB3.0.
• Enforces read timeout by hardware resets, dramatically speeding up bad sector processing, which allows imaging highly degraded HDDs/SSDs.
• Allows searching for specific keywords within the data going through the device in real time, and in most cases without reducing imaging speed.
• Advanced logging capabilities, ATA password & WD Smartware unlocking, access to HPA & DCO hidden data areas, graphical speed display, USB-SCSI error reporting, complete sector-level status information, and much more.

What is the difference between Deepspar USB Stabilizer and Guardonix ???

Both USB Stabilizer and Guardonix are built on the same hardware platform, but have different software/firmware. Essentially if they are a forensic investigator who occasionally deals with unstable drives then they probably need Guardonix and if they are a data recovery company who only deals with unstable drives then they probably need USB Stabilizer. Here are the main differences between them:

• USB Stabilizer allows precisely controlling read timeout in milliseconds, while Guardonix just has three fixed presets (short, medium, long). The Short preset in Guardonix is 1250ms and it can’t go lower than this. For many highly unstable drives it’s more appropriate to use smaller values around 400-800ms, allowing the device to get past bad sectors that much faster. If the drive has a lot of bad sectors then this is a large difference.
• USB Stabilizer allows choosing different types of resets to execute after timeout (software, hardware, controller, repower), while Guardonix only does hardware reset (and repower after if it fails). This means that there will be fewer situations with Stabilizer where the storage device fails to be reset after timeout, although hardware reset or repower is best in something like 98% of cases, so this is a small difference.
• USB Stabilizer works with vendor specific commands, so you can use firmware repair tools like PC-3000/MRT/DFL/etc to build head maps, repair firmware, etc. through it, whereas Guardonix does not allow this (since such commands could change drive contents, invalidating the forensic process), so Guardonix can never work with those types of tools.
• USB Stabilizer allows disabling writeblocking and with Guardonix it’s always on no matter what.
• Guardonix allows doing a raw keyword search within the data that goes through it in real time (for forensic purposes) and USB Stabilizer does not (since it’s not useful for data recovery). Although, it is possible to run Guardonix software with Stabilizer hardware (but not vice versa) to get the feature that way.

In the design of any read instability handling hardware there are always trade-offs between speed and data. More speed means less data and vice versa. Some underlying parts of the design in USB Stabilizer are turned more for speed (i.e. faster, but could be missing more sectors) and Guardonix is tuned more for data (slower, but getting more sectors).

Set contains:

• Guardonix Writeblocker Standard
• USB 3.0 cable
• 5V power supply cable