FBI hopes hard drive will shine light on Conn. shooter's motive

Computerworld - The FBI is reportedly examining a hard drive found in the bedroom of Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza in the hopes that they can glean insight into the 20-year-old's activities before the Friday rampage that left 28 people -- including Lanza himself -- dead.

Although police have refused to publicly confirm that they're using forensics technology to retrieve information from the drive, published reports cited police officials who said a drive, broken into pieces, was found outside of Lanza's computer.

According to those sources, FBI forensics experts will examine the drive to try to figure out who Lanza corresponded with before the massacre and how else he may have used the computer.

Lanza, who lived in his mother's Newtown, Conn. home, shot his mother in the head with a rifle early Friday, according to police. He then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School with his mother's AR-15 .223 caliber rifle, two semi-automatic handguns and enough ammunition to kill everyone in the school, police said. Lanza killed 20 students, all of them 6 or 7 years old, and six faculty members before police arrived. He committed suicide at the school by shooting himself.

Little is known about Lanza's personal life. According to media reports, his mother was a private person who rarely talked about her son.

"They're going to try to find a reason why...he went from fanaticizing about this to doing it," said Marc Rogers, chair of the Cyber Forensics Program in the Department of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University. "Were there any early indications that he was getting ready to act these fantasies out? In some cases there are and in some there aren't."

Lanza's rampage was likely done for "maximum media impact," Rogers said, so investigators will also be looking for a manifesto or some other statement the 20-year-old may have left on his computer or communicated to someone electronically.

Michael Kessler, CEO of forensics data recovery firm Kessler International, said that if Lanza knew enough to remove the hard drive from his computer and break it, it's unlikely investigators will be able to retrieve data from it.

"Obviously, they [law enforcement] have a lot of resources to do it. And, if the drive's platters aren't smashed they can put them into another drive and read them," he said. "But if he [Lanza] broke the platters, the likelihood of data recovery is slim to none."

According to Brian Cane, a consultant with ECO Data Recovery in Florida, the recovery effort will hinge on how technically savvy Lanza was - whether or not he knew to break, scratch or drill holes in his drive platters.