Forensic computer promises to make quick work of digital crime

A European consortium has come up with a high-speed digital forensic computer dedicated to the task of quickly offloading and analyzing all computer records from email or picture files to database contents and file transfers.The TreCorder is a rugged forensic PC able to copy or clone up to three hard disks simultaneously, at a speed of up to 2 Gb/min.

The same transfer would take 30 to 60 minutes using alternative equipment said Martin Hermann, general director of MH-services, the company that lead product development in conjunction with EUREKA.

EUREKA is a pan-European venture capital firm that offers partners access to knowledge, skills, expertise and of course national public and private funds. The PC not only provides a complete mirror image of the hard disk and system memory - including deleted and reformatted date - but also eliminates any possibility of falsification in the process, Hermann said. It uses the FireWire high-speed serial bus to connect the host computer and provides support for IDE, SATA and SCSI hard disks, Hermann said in a statement.