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 ...

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