LLimager Setup — Preparing Your LLIMAGER Disk

LLimager Setup is a small Windows utility with one job: turn a blank USB SSD into a fully working, multi-boot LLIMAGER disk — the same drive you'll hand to examiners in the field, containing the Windows and/or Mac apps, the bootable dead-box Linux/WinPE environment, and a dedicated area for case data. You run it once per disk, before that disk is used for any acquisition work.

What Gets Created

LLimager Setup partitions and formats the target disk into four areas:

Partition	Label	Size	Purpose
Ventoy boot partition	(hidden)	tiny	The actual boot loader Ventoy uses to present its menu. Not visible as a drive letter — this is normal.
ISO partition	ISO_BOOT	15 GB	Holds the bootable .iso files Ventoy lists at boot time — the forensic Linux live environment and the WinPE BitLocker Recovery ID tool.
llimager partition	llimager	30 GB	Holds the installed native app(s) you selected (Mac and/or Windows), plus the shared license file location used by both the Windows and Linux apps.
llidata partition	llidata	everything left over	Free space for case folders and acquired images — point your destination path here when imaging.

All existing data on the target disk is permanently erased — LLimager Setup is meant to run against a blank drive, not one already holding evidence.

Once prepared, the disk boots exactly as described in the Ventoy boot menu section of the LLIMAGER Linux manual page — this utility is what builds that menu and its two ISOs in the first place.

Requirements

• A Windows 10 or 11 machine to run LLimager Setup on (this utility itself is Windows-only; it can prepare a disk that boots LLimager Linux and/or LLimager Mac just as well as it prepares one for LLimager Windows).
• Administrator rights — LLimager Setup requires elevation and will prompt for it (UAC) on launch.
• An active internet connection — the app payloads and boot ISOs are downloaded fresh from e-Forensics servers during setup, not bundled with the installer.
• A blank USB SSD to prepare. Typically 1 TB or 2 TB. The bare minimum size is about 45 GB (15 GB ISO partition + 30 GB llimager partition, plus a small margin) — but at that size there's no room left for the llidata partition, so use a much larger drive in practice.

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Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Step 1 — Launch LLimager Setup

Connect the blank target SSD, then launch LLimagerSetup.exe. Windows will prompt for administrator approval (UAC) — accept it; the app cannot run without it.

Step 2 — Select Apps and Target Disk

The main screen has two panels side by side:

• Install — checkboxes for LLimager Mac, LLimager Windows, and LLimager Linux. All three are checked by default; uncheck any you don't want deployed to this disk. (LLimager Linux isn't a folder like the others — it's the bootable ISO itself, so checking it adds the forensic live ISO and its companion BitLocker Recovery ID ISO to the ISO_BOOT partition.)
• Select target disk — lists only USB/removable disks; the host computer's own internal system disk is deliberately never shown, so it can't be selected by mistake. Each entry shows the disk's name, size, disk number, bus type, and current drive letter (if any). If the disk you expect isn't listed, connect it and click Rescan.

Next is enabled once at least one app is checked and a disk is selected.

Step 3 — Confirm and Format

This screen restates, in plain terms, what's about to happen: the selected disk, its size and bus type, and a warning that it will be completely erased and repartitioned into the four areas described above. It also lists which apps will be installed.

To proceed, type FORMAT (all capital letters) into the confirmation field — this is a deliberate speed bump before an irreversible, destructive operation. The Erase & Prepare Disk button stays disabled until the text matches exactly. Use Back to change your app or disk selection first.

Step 4 — Preparing the Disk

Once confirmed, LLimager Setup runs through a fixed sequence of phases, shown as a checklist with a progress bar and a live log below it:

1. Prepare boot files
2. Format disk
3. Deploy boot menu theme — installs the custom LLIMAGER-branded Ventoy boot screen.
4. Create llimager / llidata partitions
5. Create app folders
6. Download apps & ISOs — each item downloads with its own byte-count progress (e.g. LLimagerw.zip -- 42.1 MB / 118.6 MB); this is by far the longest phase and its duration depends on your internet connection.
7. Finish

Do not disconnect the disk or the internet connection while this is running. If a step fails, the screen switches to a Setup failed message with the error detail — see Troubleshooting below.

Step 5 — Done

On success, the Setup complete screen shows the drive letters Windows assigned to the three visible partitions:

• ISO partition
• llimager partition
• llidata partition

Open llimager Folder jumps straight to the llimager partition in File Explorer — useful for the next step. Close exits the app.

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After Setup — Making the Disk Fully Functional

LLimager Setup builds the disk's structure and installs the app payloads, but one manual step remains before the disk is ready to use in the field:

Add your license file. Neither LLimager Windows nor LLimager Linux will run without a valid license. Copy the llimagerw.lic file you were issued into:

<llimager partition>\llimagerw\llimagerw.lic

This single file and location work for both the Windows app and the Linux live environment — there's no separate license file for Linux. The llimagerw folder is created automatically during setup (even if you only selected LLimager Linux), so there's always somewhere to drop it.

From there, the disk is ready:

• Point destination paths for acquisitions at the llidata partition.
• Boot the disk on a target machine to see the Ventoy menu and choose between the forensic Linux environment and the BitLocker Recovery ID tool — see the Ventoy boot menu section of the LLIMAGER Linux manual page for that walkthrough.

Important: re-running LLimager Setup against a disk that already has case data on its llidata partition will erase it, exactly like the first run. Only re-run Setup on a disk if you intend to fully rebuild it.

Troubleshooting

• Target disk doesn't appear in the list. Only USB/removable disks are ever shown. Confirm the drive is connected, then click Rescan. If multiple USB drives are attached, disconnect the ones you don't intend to prepare to avoid picking the wrong disk.
• Setup fails partway through. The error message on the Setup failed screen describes what went wrong (e.g. a network interruption during download). The disk may be left partially repartitioned — don't try to use it as-is; click Try Again and run the full process again from the beginning, which will erase and rebuild it cleanly.
• Download phase is slow or times out. This phase pulls the app packages and boot ISOs over the internet; a slow or unstable connection will make it the longest step by far. Retry on a faster/more stable connection if it fails.

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