A system and method for selectively capturing and storing emulation data results from a hardware emulation system, which reduces the data bandwidth requirement and the unnecessary consumption of the DRAM memory capacity by uninteresting data. According to one embodiment, a system comprises a trace array for storing one or more frames of data; a first set of hardware control bits that enables the trace array to selectively capture non-continuous windows of data within a frame of data; a data capture card; and a second set of hardware control bits that enables the data capture card to capture a select frame of data from the one or more frames of data stored on the trace array.