Physical Disk Emulator (PDE)
The Physical Disk Emulator (PDE) module is similar to the VFS in many ways, but there are some clear and distinct differences:
- PDE can mount only a physical disk or volume. VFS can also mount an image file.
- When PDE mounts a disk or volume, Windows treats it as a disk or volume. Windows treats a VFS-mounted item as a network share.
- PDE mounts file systems supported by Windows. VFS mounts any file system supported by EnCase.
- With VFS you can see unallocated clusters, deleted files, and recovered partitions.
- With PDE, you can use VMware to mount a disk as a virtual machine.
When PDE mounts a disk or volume, it will appear in the Windows Logical Disk Manager, which is a service that starts when there is a need to ...