What happened to FTK 2?

A selection of comments from a recent forum thread:

"The product is good, but wow is it unpolished and slower than...well it's slow."

"What I find frightening is that regardless of which system its used on, the performance still sucks. I have a quad core w/ 8gb ram, striped raptors and oracle on a raid 5 and it doesn't make a difference."

"...the problems seen in the latest 2.0 release of the venerable AccessData Corp. product, Forensic Tool Kit (FTK 2.0), just seem deeper and wider than I've run into elsewhere...

"I helped the dept decide to buy 10 licensed copies of FTK 2.0 about 3 months ago. To my regret, it has not turned out well for us so far."

"What really hurt me was the [lack of] ability to save all your case data to independent HDD's for better control and storage. There were also cases where the client wanted all the work to be done on site. They did not want their data leaving the premisses. With FTK 2.0 that made it pretty much impossible."

Things don't get much better elsewhere:

"What little credibility Access Data had in the past, is now gone. At least under their old management, they could focus on doing one thing, right. Now, management is so distracted by trying to play the enterprise and eDiscovery market that they have forgotten their core competency. All we get now are empty promises, buggy code, horrible customer service and promises of vaporware. I just can't risk my own career credibility by continuing to invest in such a product. I am going to stick with Guidance, which is the gold standard in this space."

To be fair, it hasn't all been bad news:

"...it's not all grim for FTK fans. AccessData still has about the best Registry Viewer application on the market, and the FTK Imager is, hands down, the best acquisition application for an unbeatable price. The Password Recovery Toolkit is an able application, and AccessData's telephone product support is first rate." [Craig Ball]

and it should be noted that SC Magazine awarded FTK 2.0 a "Best Buy" rating.

Overall though, you'd be hard pressed, even after Access Data CEO Tim Leehealey's attempt to repair some of the damage here, to see this release as anything other than a disaster for FTK's reputation. That's sad news for Access Data, for us as practitioners - especially those who had such high hopes for this new product - and for anyone concerned about the lack of competition in this marketplace.