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Recommend a PC for basic forensic / data recovery use....

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  • 30-12-2012 7:20pm
    #1
    JohnCleary
    Registered Users Posts: 10,211 ✭✭✭✭


    Folks,
    For college i'll need to get myself a stand-alone PC for messing about with computer forensics bits / data recovery etc....

    Any sort of a PC would do I guess, but ideally I want a decent sized tower (I do have a tower shell here that I could swap bits over to) as we'll be playing about with hardware.

    Do most modern mobo's come with both IDE / SATA connections, or are most gone to SATA only? I've been lacking in the hardware knowledge side of things over the past few years


    Any advice much appreciated; I hope to pick up a 2nd hand tower (or as said can be a desktop that i'll swap over myself) from adverts or the likes


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    #2
    Khannie
    Registered Users Posts: 37,485 ✭✭✭✭Khannie


    Most motherboards wont have an IDE connector these days. You can get SATA to IDE converters though.


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    #3
    ZENER
    Registered Users Posts: 6,163 ✭✭✭ZENER


    Would a USB (or Thunderbolt ?) to IDE/SATA converter do the job ? I've used one of these for many jobs recovering data from drives.

    Ken


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    #4
    areyawell
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,435 ✭✭✭areyawell


    Did computer Forensics in college. You don't need anything specific.
    Proper computer forensic hardware costs thousands of euros and you certaintly won't be connecting to the computer like a normal hard drive.

    They wont be giving you disk images which are 2000 GBS are anything, maybe around 40GB. If you really want to mess around all you need is one of these.
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bipra-SATA-Adapter-Power-Drive/dp/B001A5SK56/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356893182&sr=8-1

    The equivalent forensic system is with a write blocker so the evidence cant be altered is.
    http://www.digitalintelligence.com/products/ultrakit/

    You won't need anything specific but always nice to get a good copy of encase if ya can find it on the internet, otherwise its a couple of grand for the software.

    Also in college they will only give you a software copy of the hard drive, a clone of a hard drive file which you will be using for file retrieval and forensic analaysis, usually around 40GB in size.

    Go over to the PC building and Upgrading forum, they will build you a decent PC for 300 that would cost a lot more in shops


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    #5
    JohnCleary
    Registered Users Posts: 10,211 ✭✭✭✭JohnCleary


    Thanks for the info folks.

    Think I will actually just build a PC myself for all i'll need it for. Have a tower and a PSU already


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