I am new to forensics and know very little about computer hardware. I am looking for suggestions on getting our forensics lab up to speed. We currently have one machine running both FTK and EnCase. Originally, This was sufficient for one officer handling one case at a time. However, we now have multiple cases needing to be imaged at the same time with two officers competing for use of one box.
To help alleviate this we plan on using a video forensics computer as a wiping/imaging station and then moving the case over to the forensic machine for processing.
We have funding for another forensic machine and a RAID NAS server. I am looking for someone with knowledge in computers as well as FTK and/or EnCase that would be willing to talk with me about what to buy and how to optimize/triage our forensic process.
I'd recommend getting hold of 'Building a Digital Forensic Laboratory Establishing and Managing a Successful Facility' by Andy Jones and Craig Valli
It covers questions relating to hardware and contains a lot of other useful information for a fledgling lab.
Is there anything more up to date? This was written in 2008 and the field has been moving quickly over the last couple of years. Just curious about the same topic. Especially when it comes to the needs of storage and examiner boxes!
I'm not aware of more recent whole books on lab set up, but there are chapters in more recent books on the subject. For example Chapter 4 of 'System Forensics, Investigation, and Response' by John Vacca and K Rudolph.
If you're primarily interested in detailed system specs to support particular products then books are probably not the best way to go they're either rather generic or quickly become outdated because the hardware landscape changes so frequently. You can often get information on suitable specs from the product vendor or the product's support community.