With a rating of 7.5 GB/Min what kind of performance can you expect with the new Voom  Hardcopy III?

It really depends on the drives you are working with (see data below on average performance of popular hard drives).  Essentially the Voom Hardcopy III like any hardware imager will be limited to operating at the lowest read/write speed of both the source and destination i.e. if you are imaging a SATA 150 drive on to a SATA 300 destination you can expect to be limited to operating at the SATA 150 speed . Simply put, these devices work wonders not miracles - you cannot expect to write to your destination drive faster then you can read from your source drive.

Hard Drive Average Performance as measured with HDTach

Western Digital WD6400AAKS

Read 5.52 GB/Min

Write 5.52 GB/Min

Western Digital VelociRaptor

Read 6.6 GB/Min

Write 6.54 GB/Min

Hitachi 7K1000

Read 4.38 GB/Min

Write 4.38 GB/Min

Samsung HD103UJ

Read 5.7 GB/Min

Write 5.64 GB/Min

WD Caviar Black

Read 5.46 GB/Min

Write 5.46 GB/Min

The typical high-end drives I run across on my imaging jobs simply do not use all of the capacity of the Voom Hardcopy III. However my current hardware imager at best only runs at 4 GB/Min - well short of achieving the speeds of the drives I am currently seeing. The Voom Hardcopy III allows me to reduce current imaging time and affords room for growth in the evolution of Hard Drive technology.

In my testing I averaged 5.1 GB/Min with the Voom Hardcopy III when imaging SATA 300 drives. When considering the 1TB or larger drives that are now regularly shipping in workstations or servers drive I can shave about an hour off of my imaging time when compared to my current 4.0 GB/Min hardware imaging solution. Switching from a boot disk and USB solution a hardware imager like the Voom Hardcopy III can potentially reduce imaging job time to only 1/5th the typical USB based imaging time.

Actual unit under test and firmware level

Rear connections:

Real world performance numbers:

Disk Wipe - Single Drive

Destination: Maxtor MaxLine Plus 150 GB SATA 150

3.5 GB/Min

Disk Wipe - Single Drive

Destination: Western Digital WD1001FALS 1.0 TB  SATA 300

5.1 GB/Min

Disk Wipe - Two Drives Simultaneously

Destination: Maxtor MaxLine Plus 250 GB SATA 150

Destination: Maxtor MaxLine Plus 250 GB SATA 150

3.5 GB/Sec

Disk Wipe - Two Drives Simultaneously

Destination: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

Destination: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

5.1 GB/Sec

Disk Wipe - Two Drives Simultaneously

Destination: Western Digital WD1001FALS 1.0 TB SATA 300

Destination: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

5.1 GB/Min

Disk Cloning 

SHA1 Enabled

Source: WD3000GLFS 300 GB 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor SATA 300

Destination: WD3000HLFS 300 GB 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor SATA 300

5.2 GB/Min

Disk Cloning 

SHA1 Enabled

Source: Western Digital WD1001FALS 1.0 TB SATA 300

Destination: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

5.1 GB/Min

Disk Cloning 

SHA1 Enabled

Source: Maxtor DiamondMax 120 GB SATA 150

Destination: Maxtor MaxLine Plus 250 GB SATA 150

3.5 GB/Min

Disk Imaging

SHA 1 Enabled

Source: Maxtor DiamondMax 120 GB SATA 150

Destination: Maxtor Maxline Plus 250 GB SATA 150

3.5 GB/Min

Disk Imaging

SHA 1 Enabled

Source: Maxtor DiamondMax 120 GB SATA 150

Destination: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

3.5 GB/Min

Disk Imaging

SHA1 Enabled

Source: Western Digital WD1500HLFS VelicoRaptor 150 GB SATA 300

Destination: Western Digital WD30000GLFS VelicoRaptor 300 GB SATA 300

5.2 GB/Min

Disk Imaging

SHA1 Enabled

Source: WD5000AACS 500 GB SATA 300

Destination: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

5.0 GB/Min

Disk imaging one source to two destinations

SHA1 Enabled

Source: Maxtor Maxline Plus 250 GB SATA 150

Destination 1: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

Destination 2: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

Disk imaging one source to two destinations

SHA1 Enabled

Source: Maxtor Western Digital WD5000AACS 500 GB SATA 300

Destination 1: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

Destination 2: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.0 TB SATA 300

USB connector:

The Voom Hardcopy III provides a connection for a USB keyboard to add comments to the report written to the destination hard drive:

Other notable findings:

• Found no performance degradation when running SHA1 vs. disabled

• Found no performance degradation when wiping 2 drives simultaneously

• Found no performance degradation when imaging from 1 source to 2 destination drives simultaneously

• Found no performance degradation when cloning from 1 source to 2 destination drives simultaneously

**All comments and data contained herein are the personal opinions of Paul A. Henry

Paul A. Henry

MCP+I, MCSE, CCSA, CCSE, CISSP-ISSAP, CISM, CISA, CIFI, CCE

Forensics & Recovery LLC

Florida PI Agency License A2900048

www.forensicsandrecovery.com