thinQmaster Virtual testing partner Adaptive practice exams that find your weak spots and drill them. Every answer explained. From $69
Enroll

thinQmaster

Find your exam

Five questions free, before you decide.

Step 1 · choose a vendor

In one of our camps? Your practice exams come with the tuition — they are on your study page already.

Security Operations · Foundational

Write Blocker

A hardware or software tool that allows reading from a storage device while preventing any writes to it.

Definition

Write blockers protect original evidence from modification, including automatic OS writes such as mounting metadata updates. Hardware write blockers sit between the drive and the forensic workstation and are preferred for admissibility.

Example

Connecting a seized SATA drive through a Tableau hardware write blocker before imaging.

Exam tip

Use a write blocker before imaging to preserve evidence integrity.

Related terms