How We Build Your Forensics PC

How We Build Your Forensics PC

Lots of folks will tell you all of the wonderful things that they do when building your PC. We thought it might be fun to just show you how we do it! You'll see a photo essay which will let you quickly see how we build your Forensics PC. Each step is documented with a small photo. Want to really see the detail? Just click on the photo and we'll launch a Ginormous photo!

Here we mount two 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor 10,000 rpm drives. Note the strong drive cage ? these drives are expensive and we wouldn?t want them to get loose.??The drives are configured as Raid 0 ? this means that both drives are mirrors of each other and a continuing and automatic backup is made.

Our case is strong steel. Here we mount the first DVD writer.

Forensic computers might easily contain sensitive data or you might want to organize your work by hard drive. So we include removable hard drives using this tray system.

And this is what we put in them. 1TB SATA drives are our normal choice. These will hold many hours of video and hundreds of hours of audio.

Here you see the tray with the 1TB drive sliding into its holder. You can buy as many trays as you want and pop in drives at will. This also makes it easier to store your work in a secure safe if needed.

But one drive might not be enough. Best to install two trays and two 1TB drives. Note the screens on the drive trays ? these show you the status of the drive inside and the temperature. There is a small fan built into each case to keep the drive nice and cool. Should they heat up, an alarm will sound.

Note the ?no tool? design of the case. Just turn the handle and the drive is secured. This makes for super easy installation and removal. Except that we put screws on BOTH sides of the drives to secure them. We have to ship it after all ? we want it super strong. You can remove these screws later if you care to.

Here?s the flipside of the case. Note that we can also remove the cover here to make it easy to put in the screws necessary for strength and for great heat transfer. We use silver screws on the back since you don?t often see it.

Now for the card reader to handle all of those different memory card formats. This is a 3.5? device, but we adapt it nicely to the full sized opening.

Inside, the cables from 6 SATA devices and 1 IDE device can be quite a challenge to deal with. We bundle them later with wire ties so that we allow for easy airflow to help keep the system cool. They also look better!

We can install any op system, but really like Win7 pro. It?s got a very nice backup facility built into it. We hand install this from original Microsoft discs and you get those discs ? not just some OEM disc image.

Fans. We use very fast unlocked and overclockable CPU chips and DDR3 memory on these machines to make them FAST. We also include a LARGE number of drives. A machine of this power needs good heat management and this is done with fans. Here you see shots of 4 large fans.

But wait, there are two more fans for a total of 6. If you remember, easy drive tray has its own small fan.

Here the machine is all together and is ready to be used. Note the nice Blu Ray writer. From top to bottom we have:

• Audio in and out
• USB
• 1 ESATA port
• Reset Switch with hard drive activity light
• Power Switch
• 22X Lightscribe DVD writer
• Blue Ray Disc Writer
• Two Removable 1TB drives
• Media reader to handle all popular formats

The removable drives in action. You can just see the temperature display. To remove, you insert a key and pull that silver handle outwards.

That's just the beginning...keep in mind that these PCs are built directly to your specifications...need an extra drive?...no problem...additional specific software so you can put your entire purchase on 1 PO?...no big deal. You can only experience how easy this is by calling us toll free at 717 586 2999.