Computer for customer file transfers and data mugrations

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I’m in IT and work in a computer repair department. I do a lot of data backups, file transfers, and dealing with customer data. In terms of software I use regularly, I use Transcopy, DriveSnapshot, and Macrium Reflect. Occasionally need to jump over to Linux too.

My biggest debate is the form factor and ports. For file transfers I prefer USB-C, USB A 3.1 or 3.2 Gen 1 or 2. Thunderbolt too but as an add-on PCiE or with it build in might uproot a budget. I’d also like to retain customers files for a month in case they need them. So in my eyes 2 4TB OR 6TB drives should be enough. Also if it’s any help I live by a MicroCenter. Not sure if getting something that’s 10 core or more would speed stuff up. Open to thoughts and opinions.

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Anyone have advice on this?

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Hmm… This depends on quite a few factors.

Personally, I would go with a Linux NAS with a Thunderbolt dock. Linux already has plenty of good imaging capabilities, and creating new images in virtual machines is possible, too. That should save you quite a few headaches though would require some retraining and figuring out stuff as you go.

iFuse should let you access iDevices in a regular fashion:

As for regular snapshots, have a look at Clonezilla, doClone or Partclone. Should save you a bit in licensing costs, at the very least.

As for a reliable system, here is a quick build recommendation:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 9 5900X $340.00
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-U12S chromax.black 55 CFM CPU Cooler $79.95 @ Amazon
Motherboard Gigabyte X570S AORUS MASTER $299.99
Memory Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 $48.99
Storage Kingston KC3000 1TB M.2-2280 $106.99
Storage Western Digital Red Plus 12 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM $215.93
Storage Western Digital Red Plus 12 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM $215.93
Video Card MSI AERO ITX Radeon RX 6400 $149.99
Case Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 $179.99
Power Supply EVGA SuperNOVA 650 GT $89.00
Total $1726.76

This should get you started. Good luck.

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im not sure your allowed to do it legally unless they ask.
so you best check with your regions laws.

from what i can find. there are legal/ethical requirements even in murica.

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I always ask the customer if they want anything saved to archive before wiping the old drives.
( once final transfer and verification is complete )
Usually to dvd or usb stick.

And i second the motion on the hdd’s as the transfer storage.
The ssd used for your os.

Docking stations are very handy for this task because you wont have to take your main machine apart to do the job
And thats a great time-saver.

You can use the cloning software of your choice!
My choice is clonezilla,
It offers so many different ways to duplicate a drive.

But for most information saving such as pictures and documents its just as easy to copy the documents and pictures folders directly to the destination media.

But some programs save their documents in their own directory so its a matter of finding them and copying them as well as.

And you dont need a gaming fast system for this!
My recovery machine is an old recovered i5 machine with 32 gig of ram and (2) 3tb black drives ( storage) and an 1 tb ssd as main drive with cyberhawk linux ( for forensic work).

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I was unaware of iFuse as a product. Really interesting concept but will have to get into setting up and getting that running. That’s a really good tool for such use case.

Clonezilla is my goal to get more into using. Currently using Macrium Reflect Pro for my cloning and getting into basic scripting too. Looking into using cp commands and dd as well.

Thanks for the suggested build. A bit more then I was looking to spend. Also I believe i understand your reasoning for a Linux based NAS but to me I don’t think storing everything on a NAS would be the best solution. I’d much prefer a Windows 11 machine with a small partition to boot into Linux in case I need it to recognize or access files from drives that can’t be opened from Windows.

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I understand, my logic was that sometimes a few weeks later we get customers that say “hey I deleted all my shit, do you still have it”.

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As I said above, the saving to archive is a good thought. I would agree with it. We copy or migrate data to the user’s new machine or onto an external hard drive. The user can also provide an external hard drive as well.

The docking station is something I hadn’t thought of. I had envisioned getting a couple PCIE cards with the various connection’s I needed as a graphics card isn’t needed. The docking station though might be a better option though I wouldn’t use the multiple displays.

Getting into Clonezilla and it’s GUI version Rescuezilla. Really excited to add it to my arsenal. Right know if it’s not that much data and it’s just a data migration then I’ll just copy and paste it. It can get annoying though with permissions and files unable to be found and having to babysit the copy to skip or try again files. If you have any advice on that let me know. I also use Teracopy and FastCopy too. FastCopy is great until it asks about permissions and then it just gets annoying. Maybe it’s as simple as disabling the permissions before copying.

That’s good news. I have a machine that was left over from another tech that depending on specs I might use exclusively for data copying. Thinking 10th gen or 11th gen with 32gb of RAM. Honestly wasn’t sure if because of multi-threading that a higher end CPU would be of benefit.

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Oh, you could cut costs for sure. A more budget friendly Ryzen 5600G with an A520 motherboard or an Intel Core 12400 with B660 motherboard are both more budget friendly options. I gave you something that has a Thunderbolt port and a CPU to match it since you mentioned 10 cores, but TB can be done via a docking station or PCIe expansion card. Here is a more budget-conscious alternative:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600G $128.97
Motherboard Gigabyte B550M DS3H AC $109.99
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws V 2x16 GB 3200 MHz CL16 $77.98
Storage Kingston KC3000 1.024 TB M.2-2280 $96.15
Storage Western Digital Red Pro 16 TB 7200 RPM $269.99
Storage Western Digital Red Pro 16 TB 7200 RPM $269.99
Case DIYPC Solo-T2-R $39.96
Power Supply be quiet! Pure Power 11 500 W 80+ Gold $69.90
Total $1062.93

I was more thinking a proper Linux workstation since Linux has better and more efficient tools with a wider range of supported filesystems. You do you though!

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I’ve used Macrium Reflect for probably 10+ years, really helped me (and others) hundreds of times.

At the peak of my activity in this, and for typical desktops I would:

  1. Take a laptop to the client (quad core minimum)
  2. plug into their hdd without removing it, via usb 3 to sata cables
  3. plug into the replacement drive using the same method (if applicable)
  4. run macrium reflect to clone
  5. unplug old hdd and done.

If they wanted me to re-install the OS and apps, I might take a copy off-site with their approval (macrium has a password protection option on images, though I’m not sure how good it is).

if the old drive was spinning rust, I would leave and go for lunch and tell them I’d be back in 2 hours (or whenever the software suggested completion). If it was SSD - SSD, I might hang around at the client site. If it’s NVMe to NVMe, it’ll be done before I’ve finished my cuppa! :laughing:

When it comes to retainment, at that time, it would just be stored on an offline external hard drive. I would retain it for a duration that was in proportion to the IT competence of the client. For example, if this happened a lot or they were old, I would keep it for at least 2 years. If it was a business, I would generally buy a caddy, but a copy on a drive within it and hand it to them for storage in their own house (anywhere but the site).

Things have moved on an awful lot (mainly my knowledge), I am hugely biased towards TrueNAS so I might start with a 4 x 1TB RAIDZ2 (provides future expansion), but this really depends on turnover of new data.

As for macrium (only), I don’t think multiple cores would help it, using 4C/8T systems, it tended not to exceed 50% CPU. I’ll be using it again sometime in the near future I’m sure, but perhaps next time you do, you can check out CPU/RAM usage?

Hope that helps and I didn’t waffle on! :roll_eyes:

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I was looking into thunderbolt PCIE cards and struggled finding Thunderbolt 4. I did find a docking station that should fit all my needs. Heavily leaning towards this due to all the ports. Thunderbolt 4 Dock | TS4 | CalDigit – CalDigit

I don’t completely disagree but I also am leaning towards a dual boot Linux/Windows machine as I’ll jump back between Windows and Linux Mint depending on the needs.

this is similar to how I use it. If they’re parting with the old computer I’ll remove the drive from the laptop.

Haven’t dived into TrueNas but it’s really appealing. Like I said to @wertigon I think I’ll do a dual Linux/Windows machine for my needs.

I’m sure I’ll do a clone sometime this week so sure I’ll check and see the CPU/RAM usage and update on that.

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Related to my post, had a customer I was moving data over to her cloned drive. The files amount I was moving was around 900gb. Knew it would take a while. That said I has the NVME drive installed on her computer and a NVME enclosure plugged in to a USB 3.1 A port that should be 5 GB per sec transfer. It took like 6 hours. Shouldn’t it have gone faster? Not sure if it was a CPU bottle neck or the fact I had the hdmi cable connected to the graphics card. Thoughts or explanation? I know a 5gb video file transfers faster then 5GB of photos due to small files vs one large file.

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Could be thermal throttling on the NVMe controller, do you have a link to the enclosure you’re using? Also what NVMe drive?

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:+1: Do set A LOT of learning time if you do consider TrueNAS. It’s not aimed at it, but I suppose you can setup several VM’s on it (both Win and Lin), though not sure how much good it would be for you…it’s not really built for a “like an OS on bare metal” experience, but it does quite well. I setup my first VM on TrueNAS Scale and it was quite good.

From memory, I vaguely recall the drive speed is the limiting factor, SSD to SSD Macrium use is super quick…NVMe to NVMe is so quick it makes you laugh…well me…in a room… on my own.

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That is weird, I wonder if the hardware was the limiting factor? I’d be curious how an onboard NVMe to an onboard NVMe drive would do.

I could be wrong but I think cloning is generally done at a block level, so file size shouldn’t be an issue, but that’s just inexperienced speculation.

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Here is the links to the NVMe drives, the 2tb was in the machine.

Here’s the drive in the enclosure

Here’s the enclosure

A buddy of mine tried to set one up but struggled. Not quite sure why he struggled so much. I think storing data it makes sense due to the ZFS. I don’t think it’s great for virtualization, specifically my dual boot scenario.

I’d be really curious as well. Might have to test that soon. Even using a PCIE m.2 NVMe reader might be worth me exploring.

Unsure on this.

I think what confuses me is what the point of Thunderbolt 4 for instance advertising 40gb per second unless I’m misunderstanding the speed.

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@Jrd680 I don’t really understand what it is you do.

Do you have some kind of internal corporate backups solution?

How is it you just have login rights on the hardware?

Where would you store images long term after ingesting them (maybe it’s not an issue if you have e.g. a laptop a day)

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It is a fiddle and quite hardware specific with the settings, most of the defaults work ok, but some boards may not even be virtualisation friendly. It might be a human memory issue, but when setting up a VM on Scale (for Tailscale), it was very easy to dedicate a NIC (I have a 4 port Intel PCI unit), which is a really nice feature.

I think this is why many try to virtualise TrueNAS, because it has solid data integrity. Trouble is, virtualising it loses stability/reliability.

Whoever gets there first, should share :slight_smile:

It must be the OS not making full use of it or something, I’m stumped.

I have done well on-site with one of these (not this specific one):

Something occurred to me - power. The connection may be good enough, but the full speed might not occur if the adaptors doesn’t have enough power perhaps?

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Haven’t tried them myself, but I’d probably try one of these if I had to swap around M.2 SSDs all day, along with at motherboard than can do x4 bifurcation on a x16 slot :

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I work at a computer store in the repair department. I repair desktops, laptops, and transfer data for customers. Not Best Buy but think Macro Center.