Are there other Companies/products apart from DELL Forensic Solutions, Digital Intelligence & Forensic Computers which specifically make forensics machines? I am looking at building a lab and would like to see wats off the shelf
You can build a much better machine and far cheaper if you just spec it out and build it yourself.
I guess you Googled and found http//
Just out of interest, what do consider to be a 'forensic' machine?
I would take a step back and sketch out what your workflow is going to be for your lab first, i.e. how are you going to conduct forensic imaging, do you want centralised case storage, what software tools are you going to use etc. A lot of 'forensic' machines come with extras that you will end up paying for and may find yourself never using.
As others have said, you can often save yourself money by going down the self-build route. Personally speaking, I've often found the best balance to be buying an 'off-the-shelf' workstation from one of the big name vendors (Dell, HP, Fujitsu etc.) and then tailoring to suit the needs of the lab.
Just out of interest, what do consider to be a 'forensic' machine?
I would take a step back and sketch out what your workflow is going to be for your lab first, i.e. how are you going to conduct forensic imaging, do you want centralised case storage, what software tools are you going to use etc. A lot of 'forensic' machines come with extras that you will end up paying for and may find yourself never using.
As others have said, you can often save yourself money by going down the self-build route. Personally speaking, I've often found the best balance to be buying an 'off-the-shelf' workstation from one of the big name vendors (Dell, HP, Fujitsu etc.) and then tailoring to suit the needs of the lab.
can't agree more,buying a powerful computer from these "big vendors" is highly recommended other than building a computer of your own,almost all the forensic software work as good on normal computers as on specialized forensic computer.
You can build a much better machine and far cheaper if you just spec it out and build it yourself.
Only problem with this is additional hassle of replacing faulty parts etc, especially if you are buying for a unit of say 20. I would definitely look at approaching a large company such as Lenovo or another manufacturer and they will usually help you out and still end up costing far less than that s*** labelled as forensic machines.
As a comparison, the CCL forensic machines advertised around here are about 3.5k for the mid range version. For that we got Lenovo to make us a workstation with double the ram (128GB), Faster processors (Dual Xeon 3.3GHZ, 8 cores total), plus double the storage (2x 2TB drives) with monitors for the same price. Ours also came with Blu-ray writers and NVIDIA Quadro cards which I cant find mentioned in their specs.
Buy a MacPro and run Win/Linux/OS X with BootCamp. For your Win Tools you can't buy a better System for Windows than a Mac.
By a MacPro and run Win/Linux/OS X with BootCamp. For your Win Tools you can't buy a better System for Windows than a Mac.
£2500 for a machine with 16GB RAM, 256GB HDD and no monitor, keyboard, mouse, or optical drive?
Sounds like a good deal.
By a MacPro and run Win/Linux/OS X with BootCamp. For your Win Tools you can't buy a better System for Windows than a Mac.
£2500 for a machine with 16GB RAM, 256GB HDD and no monitor, keyboard, mouse, or optical drive?
Sounds like a good deal.
Depends on what you like to do. If you need as much CPU Cores und RAM size why not. It's easy to upgrade. You can best support Mac cases (blacklight) und PC cases (enCase, FTK, Xways, TSK and what ever you prefer).
I run a MacBook Pro 15" Retina with quad core und 16 GB. But i don't have this amount of cases and not this big data cases or really time critical cases. It fits perfect for me. The discussion has started for big machines.
But maybe something like this (common over here) could fit also
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Made in germany and certified.
Buy a MacPro and run Win/Linux/OS X with BootCamp. For your Win Tools you can't buy a better System for Windows than a Mac.
Surely must be a troll!
OK just to start with the new Mac Pro's which are being released are single processor only. Secondly MAC's are overly expensive, for the spec I posted before we were looking at close to £7000, also the Mac's have maximum of 4 internal hard disks. If you use one for your OS, one mirrored raid for your case files and a disk for your images your machine is full! In our machines we have the O/S and raid, however our image disk is a 4 disk 12TB raid 0, something we couldn't do with a MAC.