Hagrid Posted January 22, 2013 Report Share Posted January 22, 2013 It has been mentioned several times that the best setup for indexing is to use two external drives; one for the evidence and one for the case data. I recently discovered that using USB drives can slow down the indexing process. It was recommended to use two external eSATA drives. Has anyone used two external USB 3.0 drives with USB 3.0 connector on their computers? How well does it work? The reason I'm asking is that later this year I'm going to ask for a couple of forensic workstations and I'm wondering if I should order them with dual eSATA connectors or is the new USB 3.0 fast enough. Of course, I'll try to order with both, but, if USB 3.0 is good enough and I'm sure it will become the standard, I don't want to spend money on an eSATA adapter if I don't have to. I'd rather put the money into more memory, etc. Any thoughts about USB 3.0? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted January 23, 2013 Report Share Posted January 23, 2013 I've never seen anyone say 'external drives' perhaps you misunderstood or I'm not paying close enough attention Have a look at this thread, has a link which you will find tells you what you need to know. http://community.vou...ation-possible/ Oh and I don't think USB 3 will ever become the standard, it's fast becoming recognised as the "Vista" of the USB standards. Look for eSata if you must use external drives as they are a much faster and much more stable option that USB 3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougee Posted January 23, 2013 Report Share Posted January 23, 2013 I have to say that I have been using USB3 drives for the storage of forensic images for a while now and have never had any issues. I use them to image to/from X-ways and run both Intella cases and X-ways cases on them with no apparent loss of speed. I know they are not as fast as my SSD or SATA drives, but the convienence has been worth the small loss of speed. I personally find them more reliable than eSATA drives as I have had issues with eSATA drives dropping the connections and other connection issues (could just be me, but I have found the same with different drive bays, docks and different computers). When eSATA has worked it was very good, but no faster IMHO for the tasks I needed it to do than USB3. Now that my MacBookPro has USB3 it is even better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted January 24, 2013 Report Share Posted January 24, 2013 How very odd. For me USB3 has never worked consistently however eSata is flawless. I have constant dropouts when using USB3 with Xways. If I try and recover/copy data from a case onto a USB3 drive in every single instance at some point Windows Explorer would lose the connection and say the device no longer existed, forcing Xways to abort the recover/copy process. Under normal operation I have constant dropouts and the throughput speed is slower than USB2 when averaging out. I have been having some other issues with my machine so there is a possibility the machine itself is the issue rather than USB3 per say. Might be time for a full reinstall to make sure...arrrgh! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougee Posted January 24, 2013 Report Share Posted January 24, 2013 I think we have just found the problems with computers and forensics in general, nothing ever works the same. At least we have options. I was hoping for more thunderbolt support by now for external drives, but nothing really of a reasonable price has come out. I just bough a network Drobo and connect using iSCSI, it is working really well and less than $5,000 for 16TB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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