DIY open source hardware write blocker & disk imager-- FireBrick Firmware

Cybercrime has been a growing concern for the past two decades. What used to be the task of specialist national police squads has become the routine work of regional and district police departments. Unfortunately, the funding for cybercrime units does not seem to grow as fast as the amounts of digital evidence.
FIREBrick is an open source alternative to commercial hardware write blockers and disk imagers, which can be assembled from off-the shelf mass-produced components for around $199.

List of parts

To build a FIREBrick you need:

1. AsRock E350M1 Motherboard
2. 2Gb DDR3 Desktop RAM (1333 or 1066)
3. Dynamode PCIX3FW 3-Port Firewire PCIe
4. An LCD2USB 20×4 display. You can buy it from Lcdmodkit or you can make one yourself according to these instructions.
5. At least three SATA cables – two for the internal RAIDed drives + one long SATA cable for connecting FIREBrick to the target.

You will need a case of your choice that fits a mini-ITX (pretty much any case) and a PSU with at least three SATA Power connectors (200W is quite enough).
You will also need two equal-sized HDDs for internal RAID array storage.

FIREBrick Assembly steps:

• Attach the motherboard to the case
• Connect the Power SW wire to the motherboard
  
• Connect the Reset SW wires to the  motherboard
  
• Connect the HDD wires to the motherboard
  
• Connect the Power LED header to the motherboard
• Connect the HD Audio wires to the motherboard
  
• Connect the front LCD Screen wires to the motherboard
  
  
• Insert the RAM into the motherboard
  
• Connect SATA cables to the motherboard
• Put the firewire card into the motherboard PCI-E slot.
  
• Connect power supply header to the firewire card.
  
• The finished product.
  

Flashing the FIREBrick Firmware (Coming soon)

We will release the FIREBrick firmware and instructions on how to upload it into BIOS very soon (May 2013). Please check back and/or subscribe for updates.