A working installation of the Android SDK or Android platform tools is a must during the investigation of a forensic device. The Windows version of Android Studio is around 718 MB, and rather heavy compared to the software for the platform tools, which is just 20 MB.
The following is the step-by-step procedure to install the Android platform tools on a Windows 10 machine:
- Before you install Android Studio or the platform tools, make sure that your system has Java Development Kit (JDK) installed, because the Android SDK relies on Java SE Development Kit.
JDK can be downloaded from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html.
- Download the latest version of the platform tools from https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.
- Right-click and extract the ZIP files to a folder. The installation location is your choice and must be remembered for future access. In this example, we will extract it to the C: folder.
- Open the directory (C:platform-tools) and note that the following tools are listed:
Android platform tools
This completes the basic Android tool installation. If you're installing the full-blown Android Studio version, you should still see the platform tools folder under the newly installed Android directory.