Building powerful workstation , suggestions welcome

[TaskManager]

friends i am building a mid range workstation for dr purpose.main objectives are-
high reliability for extended hours of wok
high performance - IO bandwidth for large data transfer

would like to know what configurations you guys are using.
i would like to know which cpu is better amd or intel besides reliable smps brand i use corsair and antec
cheers
jamya

[mr_spokk]

Hi sorry to say, but this is not the right forum for you.
As you can see we only talking recovery of harddrives, flashmemory e.t.c.

Regards/ Bosse

[TaskManager]

Hi mr_spokk
I think this thread could help others as well.
Workstation will be used as a professional data recovery machine and will accomodate pc3000 and scsi /sas cards. any suggestions or modifications may help me to build future ready to tackle upcoming technologies .
thanks

[TaskManager]

In continuation of this thread , so many choices are there -
SMPS -- corsair or Antec
Hard disk - Seagate Es.2 or WD raptor
SAS card - LSI or Adaptech

[laptokowiec]

Why spend lots of $$$ for powerful workstations ?
It won't help when you clone from damaged drive.
Better invest in some DR equipment.

[Nick_CT]

I agree, I don't see a Raptor or any other high-speed hardware making much of a difference. I initially ran my PC3K on an old Pentium 4 with 512MB RAM and an 80GB HDD when I started out. Have moved it over to an i5 with 4GB DDR3 (32bit OS as PC3K only has 32bit driver) and sure, it does run certain tasks and analysis faster, but I can't imagine needing anything more powerful.

[Eleg]

Not a component of the actual workstation, but the first thing I would consider when setting up a HW environment for data recovery is an UPS. To make sure you get an uninterrupted and non-spiky supply of mains power.

[mr_spokk]

Hi TaskManager,
I must say I'm sorry, did't see that you were after DR workstations....I thought you ment workstations in general
I use a GA-EQ45M-S2, with duocore E5400 @2.7Ghz, 2Gb ram and a 1Tb ES.2 drive, also use a Promise SAS card to that. One of my other DT is a AMD Athlon 64 duocore 4400+ @2.3Ghz, 2Gb ram with a Asus MB.
Nothing fancy at all, but it works very good for me.

Regards/ Bosse

[positivebit]

i would suggest the following:

PC:
i3 cpu ( 65watt against 130w of i5/i7)
asus motherboard with sata 6GB and USB 3.0
separeted VGA
2x2GB DDR3 Kingston
good power supply (Coolermaster 500w do the job)

UPS:
APC UPS

S/O:
xp pro 32bit

that's definitely the more stable config i found.

based on this in my laboratory i have done 7 workstation as above, running overnight and sometimes more.
no problem since 3 months.

(now that i said it, i would have bad luck !)

[Nick_CT]

Get a display card so that you can run at least 2 monitors, 3 is even better when working with more than one job at a time.

[mr_spokk]

@ positivebit, Murphy can hear you!
For my workstations I use KVM switches.

[laptokowiec]

When copying sectors takes hours (or days), the less fancy workstation the better.
Multicore systems with lots of stuff onboard use a lot of energy.

[TaskManager]

Thank You guys for all suggestions which are most useful particularly mr_spokk Nick_CT & positivebit
One thing is clear -
1) PC3000 /UDMA does not need lots of cpu power and less powerful cpu may give energy efficiency unlike processor intensive tasks like password breaking etc. a very good suggestion when you are not going to use 5% of cpu.
2) A dual display vga - work on both channels can be monitored same time
3) UPS- very essential for cloning big hard disks

I have completely revamped my plans which will be like following -
asus atx motherboard with 8x2 phase cpu power supply
corsair - HX650W- professional smps - 80 Plus certified - minimum 80% efficiency
corsair - Denominator Extreme 2gb X 2 dual channel memory with low latency factory matched pair
hard disk - seagate ES.2 - 1TB
AMD - phenom X2 560 - dual core - 80W cpu
APC ups
Dual gigabit ethernet for connection to NAS further Data copying
I will use onboard vga in order to reduce heat in chasis and cluttered internals besides less power consumption.
win 7 pro 32 bit

I have saved at least US$400 from previous config.Thanks to all

[guru]

Just one general suggestion. IF using PC3kUDMA for clone I would use PC3kUDMA PORT 0 (Patient) and your Motherboard PORT (for donor)

[Nick_CT]

Just one general suggestion. IF using PC3kUDMA for clone I would use PC3kUDMA PORT 0 (Patient) and your Motherboard PORT (for donor)

In terms of freeing up ATA1 for another job, or is transfer speed better from PC3K card to a SATA port on the m/board? I've tried to clone ATA0 to a drive connected to the PC but had lots of hassles.

[guru]

transfer speed better from PC3K card to a SATA port on the m/board

[Nick_CT]

Interesting, I'll give it another try.

[Nick_CT]

Still having the same problem I had when I tried this the first time, something is stopping DE from writing to any drive that is connected to the PC's m/board, ie any drive other than what's on ATA1.

->LBA = [0.. ], Step = 256
Write error on destination drive!
Writing error on destination drive!
TWriteSysDriveThread.Msg -> Catastrophic failure
Write error on destination drive!
Writing error on destination drive!
TWriteSysDriveThread.Msg -> Catastrophic failure
Write error on destination drive!
Writing error on destination drive!
etc etc ...

Am I missing something blatantly obvious here?

[guru]

never seen that. Ask support

[crecomp]

I Think you are better of to clone from ATA 0 to a network server, you can then have the other channel free to work with.
Cloning from ATA 0 or ATA 1 to the mainboard SATA channels may mean that you would need to either have your drives plugged in in advance or need to wait for an opportunity for a reboot to connect or disconnect drives.

A good high speed network will be useful.

As for system recommendations, the system i use are all Xeon based machines, an overkill for the pc3000 but i find having these systems enables me to work on multiple jobs on multiple channels and work no other jobs such as recovering from an image or doing other tasks at the same time while having a very stable system.

I would also recommend some decent storage arrays if you are planning on saving images to a netwokr location.

good luck