Getting Started with BitCurator

Last updated on 2024-04-04 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 8 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • How do I install and use digital forensics tools that may be useful for digital curation activities?
  • What is a disk image and how can I create one?
  • What tools may be used to acquire born-digital materials from removable storage media (and other locations), which ensure the integrity of the data, create useful information about the source and the resulting materials, and can help to preserve the context of the original materials?
  • What sorts of digital media are most well suited to this sort of activity? Are there some that are not?

Objectives

  • Test and evaluate tools for use in the identification, transfer, and preservation of born-digital materials.
  • Install and become familiar with the tools in the BitCurator environment.
  • Identify appropriate tools for acquiring born-digital content from removable media and scan for potentially sensitive information stored in that media.
  • Use the Guymager disk imaging software to acquire the contents of a storage device and its associated metadata.

Activities

Getting around in BitCurator

Getting around - tasks

Getting around: Answers will vary, depending on what you choose to look at. At minimum, you should look at the various “Applications” (menu up at the top), use the right click option to look at file information, checksums, and look around to find other interesting things.

Key Points

  • Use BitCurator as a helpful way to bundle together and run many tools useful to digital forensics that are appropriate to digital curation. That is, tools that assist in creating trustworthy digital copies, provenance information, contextual data, and chain of custody information.
  • You can use GuyMager to make disk images.
  • BitCurator has things set up so you can use GuyMager as well as other tools that will document your transfer and copying processes.