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Mounting disk images

FreeBSD

To mount a disk image on FreeBSD:

First attach the image to unit #1:

mdconfig -a -t vnode -f /big3/project/images/img/67.img -u 1

Then mount:

mount -t msdos /dev/md1s1 /mnt

$ ls /mnt
BOOTLOG.PRV     BOOTLOG.TXT     COMMAND.COM     IO.SYS          MSDOS.SYS

To unmount:

umount /mnt
mdconfig -d -u 1

To mount the image read-only, use:

mdconfig -o readonly -a -t vnode -f /big3/project/images/img/67.img -u 1
mount -o ro -t msdos /dev/md1s1 /mnt

Linux

To mount a disk image on Linux

mount -t vfat -o loop,ro,noexec img.dd /mnt

The ro is for read-only.

This will mount NSRL ISOs:

mount /home/simsong/RDS_218_A.iso /mnt/nsrl -t iso9660 -o loop,ro,noexec `

Some raw images contains multiple partitions (e.g. full HD image). In this case, it's necessary to specify a starting offset for each partition.

mount -t vfat -o loop,offset=32256,ro,noexec img.dd /mnt/tmp_1
mount -t vfat -o loop,offset=20974464000,ro,noexec img.dd /mnt/tmp_2

kpartx

Mounting raw images with multiple partitions is easy with kpartx. Type aptitude install kpartx as root to install kpartx under Debian. kpartx is creating device-mappings for each partition. If the raw image looks like this:

       Device        Boot      Start       End      Blocks Id  System
    rawimage.dd1               1           1        8001   83  Linux
    rawimage.dd2               2           2        8032+   5  Extended
    rawimage.dd5               2           2        8001   83  Linux

The command

kpartx -v -a rawimage.dd

creates these mappings

   /dev/mapper/loop0p1
   /dev/mapper/loop0p2
   /dev/mapper/loop0p5

The partitions can be mounted with these commands:

mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /media/suspectHD_01/ -o ro
mount /dev/mapper/loop0p5 /media/suspectHD_02/ -o ro

Don't forget the switch -o ro !

To unmount

umount /mnt

Windows

MS Windows does not include a native means for mounting acquired images. However, there are tools available for mounting acquired images on Windows systems.

Tools

Free Tools

Commercial Tools