[SK6]

I was told I need to research and purchase an external DVD burner. Tis would be to go to the clients site and download or copy files, entire drives etc...

I was told it needs to be a USB run device. The only thing I think would be a real issue would be the driver software being thats its external.

 

[SkaredShtles]

All right, man - I'll throw you a bone.

Get the cheap one.

 

[SK6]

Well, I think the one I found would seem to work well for our needs.

Sony DRX-830U

Edit:

Although I like this one if I have to travel to the clients site.

Multi-Format DVD Burner
DRX-S70U

 

[binary visions]

That one looks fine. If it were me, personally I'd buy an internal DVD burner and a USB enclosure for it. That way you have an easily replacable unit if the burner goes bad (and it'll be cheaper to replace than buying the whole thing again).

 

[SK6]

great idea actually. The one I Google'd looks to be a great idea because I can add a HD with the burner as well.

The idea of flexibility and a drive failure being inexpensive to replace is cool.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/88dc/

 

[binary visions]

Looks nice but only if you actually need all that. Drop it and you've got a dead hard drive, dead CD drive, and expensive, dead enclosure. I'd probably just go with one or the other.

You can get an 8gb flash drive for not a lot of money as well depending on your size requirements, and they're extremely hardy and very small. External hard drive provides far more convenience than an external burner and more space than a flash drive. The burner, of course, provides its own benefits in a solid state copy and flexibility in making duplicates or whatever, but you'll need DVD burning software on whatever machine you plug it into.

 

[SK6]

Looks nice but only if you actually need all that. Drop it and you've got a dead hard drive, dead CD drive, and expensive, dead enclosure. I'd probably just go with one or the other.

You can get an 8gb flash drive for not a lot of money as well depending on your size requirements, and they're extremely hardy and very small. External hard drive provides far more convenience than an external burner and more space than a flash drive. The burner, of course, provides its own benefits in a solid state copy and flexibility in making duplicates or whatever, but you'll need DVD burning software on whatever machine you plug it into.

yeah, I thought of that route as well with the flash drive. The situation though as far as the storage is concerned is this. We get a case, and we have to go to the clients location. At the clients location may be 3 desktops, and maybe a couple of notebooks. Usually, in litigation there is a document hold and order, meaning nothing is allowed to be deleted. So, I would end up traveling with the attorney to the client site to get all of the data. Coupled with the above idea, we have a Talon which I have to figure out how to use in such away that the data (which is evidence) is forensically defensible.

So the idea of a portable HD with a DVD optical drive and burner, coupled with a thumb drive reader would eliminate the need for multiple crap.

 

[binary visions]

Ahh... In that case, I'd buy a really big hard drive (500gb or more) and put it in an external enclosure. From what I can tell, your device will create image files of the drive data, which can be placed in chunks on the hard drive.

If you go with a DVD burner, it APPEARS (and please note: this is only from what I understand after reading the product description) that you may end up spanning one image across multiple discs, which could end up being a pain.