Recommendation about “Destination Device” options in Data Extractor (File Image / Extended Image / Virtual Drive)

[A7MEDSALEH99]

Hello Everyone,

I’d like to ask for an expert recommendation regarding the “Destination Device” options available in PC-3000 Data Extractor, especially when creating HDD imaging tasks.

Case description:

I created a Data Extractor task for a 4 TB HDD and selected File Image as the destination type.
During setup, I set the image fragment size to 25 MB, and as a result, the task folder now contains more than 156,000 image files.
The task itself works fine, but file management becomes extremely difficult.

My questions are:

File Image loading:
How can I correctly reopen or load a File Image task later in Data Extractor itself?
When creating a new task and choosing the File Image as the source, which file exactly should I select?

Image structure:
Is there any way to automatically save all the small image fragments into a separate subfolder inside the task directory, to keep the structure organized?

Alternative options:
What are the main advantages and disadvantages of each destination type —
File Image, Extended Image, and Virtual Drive — from the ACE Lab team’s point of view?

Recommended practice:
Which option do ACE engineers personally recommend for professional HDD imaging and later analysis (both within Data Extractor and using third-party tools)?

[HEX]

It all depends on how you work with the image.
To open a task in DE, select the task.prm file, not the image file.

Personally, we work with the type we currently need for processing.

Merging a split image into one directory:
https://blog.acelab.eu.com/pc-3000-data ... -file.html