Recommended forensic hardware

The P5E3 WS supports 45mm Multi-Core CPU (incl Quad Core) & DDR3.

The P5E WS supports 45mm Multi-Core CPU (incl Quad Core) & DDR2.

The P5E3 Deluxe supports LGA775 & X38 / ICH9R, DDR3, Dual-LAN & RAID 0/1/JBOD.

The P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi adds WiFi to above.

The P5E3 supports LGA775 & X38 / ICH9R chipset, DDR3, Single-LAN, RAID 0/1/5/10.

The P5E supports LGA775 & X38 / ICH9R chipset & DDR2, Single-LAN, RAID 0/1/5/10.

The biggest differences are support for DDR3 or DDR2, number of PCIe slots (x16 vs x1), Crossfire support, LAN controllers, IEEE 1394 support on the board, RAID support, and number of USB ports.

All the Specs are here ASUS UK

I love seeing what other people recommend or carry in their kits. The Teeny Tap certainly appears to be a slick little device that I will be checking out. Right now I drag along an OptiView (the older II not the cool new III) and I can see the Teeny Tap being very handy.

My 2c
HD's - I like seagates too (Pretty simple basis, but haven't had one die on me from the drives i've used, and have had plenty of others die. And i liked the exceedingly cool+quiet barracuda i bought at some point.)
CD/DVD drive - Whilst i used to like Plextors too, like many others now they're just re-badged Lite-On / LG drives as far as i recall, so im not sure there is any value in not just buying a Lite-On or LG etc, and getting any firmware updates from them direct as available.

PELICAN CASES I have two 1600's. They're extremely bulky but my jump kit is large.

I have to second this, I don't own one personally, but I know several people that swear by them. They also have a lifetime replacement guarantee, and I've seen a video of them being used as a bridging ladder for a Land Rover to cross a hole …

Immensely strong & water/dust tight !

NETWORK TAPS NetOptics. The Teeny tap has saved me more than once.

I've never heard of these and would be interested in finding out more about their uses and typical scenarios …

Ronan

I had only seen the larger taps before, this is very cool.

Thanks again to everyone for those replies. It's always interesting to see what other people are using but also useful to see some consensus on various brands.

A few quick follow ups to points raised previously

- Dual vs Quad core. Where are people seeing the most significant real world performance boosts from quad core during an investigation? How are you taking advantage of the further multi-threading capabilities offered (or plan to in the future)?

- From the technical to the mundane tall (minimum 5 bay) computer cases with wheels and a sturdy handle on the top. The Cooler Master Cosmos mentioned previously fits the bill - any other recommendations?

- As the Teeny Tap has been mentioned, let's add network taps to the hardware list. Any other recommendations?

- Some more thoughts on RAM size, please. Where is your comfort zone?

- Hardware write blockers. Any votes beyond the Tableau range?

For hard drives I like Hitachi. Arguably the most reliable SATA drives but they run hot. A few of these will raise the case temps a bit. I like Seagate too.

A good alternative to Pelican Cases are the Hardigg Storm series of case. These are a bit lighter if you don't need to make a bridge out of them. I like the latches better.

As for laptops we are starting to see onboard fw800 now so look for that. In the past the pcmcia fw800 adapters have been a bottleneck. Also look for esata. I still prefer some type of desktop portable. As good as they are, sometimes the firewire just doesn't work and you need the ability to connect right to the board.

Video Card As long as it works it doesn't matter to me...ATI/Nvidia...unless you're utilizing the 8800's GPU's as processors.

I've just been looking at this sort of thing (using GPUs to process data) …

Have you actually been doing that ?

Anyone else ?

What graphics cards are people using in general ?

Curiosity killed the cat … 😉

Matrox manufactures a high quality card primarily intended for 2d rendering. I use a g550.