Principles of Digital Aanalysis Discussion

When you talk to experienced digital forensic practitioners about tools, they will often talk about the "tool belt" approach. While some digital forensic tools have a single purpose (such as creating a forensic image or parsing a system's Internet history), others are designed to handle multiple forensic and examination tasks in a single interface (e.g., large digital forensic software suites like EnCase and FTK). The concept is that not every forensic tool is the best at every job, and most operating digital forensic shops have a host of tools available for use by examiners. In fact, many examiners may even be reluctant to choose a favorite tool because they make use of so many different pieces of hardware and software to do their jobs. Is this the best approach? What are the strengths of the "tool belt" approach to digital forensics? Are there any weaknesses? Discuss these questions thoroughly in your Conference response, and respond to at least one other student's original post in a way that adds to the discussion.