Verbatim Releases Hardware-Encrypted Thumbdrives – Can You Afford One?

It seems that thumbdrives have been around forever, but in reality, it’s been less than 10 years.

from Wikipedia

Flash drive with retractable USB connector

Trek Technology and IBM began selling the first USB flash drives commercially in 2000. Singaporean company Trek Technology sold a model dubbed the “ThumbDrive,” and IBM marketed the first such drives in North America, with its product the “DiskOnKey” (which was manufactured by the Israeli company M-Systems). IBM’s USB flash drive became available on December 15, 2000,[6] and had a storage capacity of 8 MB, more than five times the capacity of the commonly used floppy disks (floppy disks having a capacity of 1.44MB).

In 2000 Lexar introduced a Compact Flash (CF) card with a USB connection, and a companion card read/writer and USB cable that eliminated the need for a USB hub.

On July 24, 2002 Netac Technology was granted a highly-contested Chinese patent for the USB flash drive.[7]

In 2004 Trek Technology brought several lawsuits against other USB flash drive manufacturers and distributors in an attempt to assert its patent rights to the USB flash drive. A court in Singapore ordered competitors to cease selling similar products[8] that would be covered by Trek’s patent, but a court in the United Kingdom revoked[9] one of Trek’s patents in that country.

Now, no one is about to dispute that thumbdrives have been a boon to many, and have effectively removed the humble floppy from most people’s lives. It is certain that the devices are handy, because, unlike those floppy disks, the thumbdrives continue to grow in size, without a different pricing structure, which was certainly not a characteristic of the floppy. (Imation and Panasonic came up with the LS-120, which increased the floppy capacity 70 fold, but at a price that the market was unwilling to accept. In contrast, the thumbdrive pricing scales in a linear fashion, with a 16GB drive being about 14-16 times more expensive as the 1GB model.)

from Tech Connect

For those in need of safe and portable storage, Verbatim has rolled out the Store ‘n’ Go USB Executive Secure, a family of flashy drives that feature 256-bit AES hardware encryption and integrated password protection. The new drives measure 62 x 21 x 10 mm, have a slide-out USB connector, Windows ReadyBoost support, and provide read and write speeds of up to 11 MB/s and 8 MB/s, respectively.

The 4, 8 and 16GB Store ‘n’ Go USB Executive Secure models have recommended price tags of 26, 39 and 69 Euro.

But as we look at the prices, and after making the mental conversions, decide that the price is not that bad, we also must ask about the consequences of having say, 16 GB of information that is encrypted, on the drive, and then having that drive fail.

If that happens, with no backup of what is on the drive – you’re screwed! And that could be putting it nicely.

Thumbdrives can be very safe, but I have had two of them fail, for no reason, with no apparent abuse. The drives were not exposed to dirt, moisture, or static charges; nor were they physically damaged, such as by a drop, or having something dropped on them. What caused the failures? It’s hard to tell. One thing is certain, I don’t put anything on a thumbdrive that either is not backed up, on another medium, or that I can’t afford to lose.

Just when you thought you had gotten beyond the sometimes catastrophic failures of floppies, you’re back to having to worry about media again. At least floppies usually gave some warning, such as a higher than normal amount of noise when being read by the drive in the machine. With a thumbdrive, the killer is silent, without any notice.

Encryption is nice if you have need of it, but there are many ways to encrypt without hardware. TrueCrypt, a popular freeware program can be installed on each machine that the drive will be used on, and the encryption can be set to be effectively insurmountable. On the other hand, if you have things that are important to you, and yet national security is not involved, you can encrypt the data by using SecureZip or WinRAR, and then only need remember one difficult, lengthy password.

By using external encryption, there is less chance of failure (remember, that inside that little stick is data, and the encryption engine, two things, twice the chance of failure), and more money to buy larger drive sizes, or perhaps a second drive, to be kept safe, for the instance when the daily use drive fails.

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Quote of the day:

Sanity is a madness put to good use.

- George Santayana

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