secure USB drive

Taking inspiration from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, a US startup has fused a USB flash drive with a ‘Cryptex’ device, a metal cylinder that can only be opened by setting the correct combination on a rotating barrel.

The latest Crypteks (notice the different spelling) is not the first device of its kind – designs have been circulating on the Internet since the Da Vinci code resurrected what is probably an older idea – but it does look like the most interesting to date.

The external 8cm barrel comprises five aluminium alloy rotating rings on which each has printed the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Removing the USB flash drive from within the cylinder involves entering the correct combination of which there are 14,348,907 possible combinations thanks to the decision to adopt letters on each ring rather than numbers.

The USB drive contained within the barrel uses 256-bit AES encryption, adding another layer of security to the physical design, with a customisable auto-format option for incorrectly-entered passwords.

If you like the Crypteks is really a sophisticated version of the common barrel combination lock which happens to contain a secure USB drive.

Some might see it as over-engineered. Secure USB keys employing AES encryption can nowadays be bought fairly cheaply and offer good levels of security for the money. The barrel device added by the Crypteks doesn’t appear to offer much added security for what is a considerable price premium. It is not clear whether the concealed USB drive is also tamper proof.

The Michigan-based designers claim they have enough money via the online Kickstarter incubator to start manufacturing the drives “in time for the holidays.”

The development model requires seed backers to pledge money in return for drives. Capacities will be 4GB, 8GB, 16GB. The price has yet to be announced by works out at around $150 for the 16GB drive for every sponsor backing the project.

USB Flash Memory: Premium Storage

data: USB flash drives, CDs and other physical media, external hard drives, online storage in the cloud...
So what are USB flash drive advantages compared to all the alternatives? Are USB flash drives the best storage solution commonly available today?

The most honest answer is: sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on your particular needs. But USB flash drives are best is one respect: it’s always the most flexible choice. So let’s look into this and compare the advantages of each storage option and one at a time...

USB flash drive advantages over CDs

CDs are a wonderful archiving solution: you can burn your data to a CD-R or CD-RW, and then store the CD in a safe (preferably fire-proof) place. It’s also an easy-to-mail solution. But for everyday use, USB flash drive advantages outnumber the benefits of CDs.

USB drives offer orders of magnitude more storage than CDs. A single USB drive can hold the equivalent of a dozen CDs and still fit in your pocket! Plus, USB drives can house programs in addition to data: it’s possible to run an entire operating system off a USB drive. While you can do this with a LiveCD, you can’t save your personal customizations, configurations or data to a CD the way you can a USB. Advantage: USB flash best.

USB flash drive advantages over external hard drives

Here, the opposite is true: external hard drives offers much higher storage capacities than a USB drive. If you have a lot of data to store - maybe a music or video collection - that you might want to hook up to different local computers, an external hard drive could work well.

But for true portability, is USB flash best here too? Yes. External hard drives are portable only compared to internal hard drives, but they can’t compete with a USB drive. Plus, flash drives use solid-state memory, meaning there are no moving parts. Hard drives with those moving parts are much more susceptible to damage and lost data when being moved around.

USB flash drive advantages over online storage

Tons of services allow you to store files online. This is a great solution for easy, near-universal access. However, its flexibility again makes USB flash best. First, USB drives can run your preferred programs and operating systems in addition to storing data. Second, you don’t need an internet connection to work off a USB drive. Third, if the internet connection is painfully slow, a USB drive will zip along at its own speed. This is a major advantage to flash: speed. Finally, if you’re working from a location whose firewall prohibits access to the sites with your files you’d be surprised how often legit sites get inadvertently blocked, you can still get to your files with a USB drive.

Your priorities decide if these USB flash drive advantages make USB flash best for your needs.

In short, we can’t really answer the question in all situations because it depends. So you tell us: is USB flash best for you? Can you think of advantages we’ve missed? We can say without hesitation that a USB flash drive has the advantage in adaptability: it can simply do more, more quickly and more easily than any other single alternative.

Thank you for your questions! Subscribe to our RSS feeds for future answers, and send us an email with your own question!

Making a Choice Between Large Versus Small Capacity USB Flash Drives

We’ve all been there—you have a few or more gigs of digital data and you need to figure out where to store it. The question is, do you invest in a larger capacity USB flash drive or multiple smaller drives? Size does matter to an extent in these circumstances except that there’s not a universal answer. Before you take the purchase plunge, here are a few key factors that could affect your decision.
- A large capacity custom flash drive will give you more space for your money. Generally, more storage translates into a significant price decrease that can be seen with the addition of every gig. For example, a 1GB drive may cost you $6 while an 8GB drive can be bought for just two dollars more.
- Consider your storage plans. If you will need to hold some extremely large files (1GB or 2GB apiece) a smaller flash drive may not have the room or speed performance of a larger drive. What’s more is that you may not want to divide one project into multiple parts for smaller USB flash drives because it could just create unnecessary prep work for you.
- Think about separating work and play. One advantage to having several smaller flash drives as opposed to a more than 8GB USB drive is that you can designate roles to each device to better organize your files. After all, who would want to mix family vacation photos alongside your corporate PowerPoint presentation?
- Check its specs. A few larger capacity flash drives use 3-bit MLC NAND chips. While these allow more storage per cell, some have been known to be less than reliable compared to sturdier SLC counterparts. A higher risk of data loss is the last thing you need with a large document, video or library of pictures.
- Back it up. Premium USB has always taken steps to strongly reiterate the importance of backing up all of your data. Multiple small capacity USB flash drives may give some extra reassurance—not putting all of your eggs in one basket so to speak. However, should you choose an 8GB, 16GB, 32GB flash drive or higher, consider also investing in another form of backup, be it extra custom USB drives or CDs and DVDs. There are countless storage combinations; the end result is up to your needs.
Which flash drive storage method do you prefer? One larger USB flash drive or a bunch of smaller ones?

Flat Rate Pricing Explained

We at FlashDrivePros.com get asked all the time if our listed prices are truly "flat rate," or if we are going to raise the price once we have the flash drive in our possession. The answer is that we never, even raise the price for our data recovery services once we receive a flash drive. We believe that having a simple, transparent, flat-rate pricing system gives our customers the peace of mind of knowing exactly how much they will spend before ever sending us their flash drive. The only time we would ever require any additional money would be if we had to order parts, which is rare. So if other companies’ price structures seem confusing, we’re happy to offer one that makes sense, and more importantly, won’t leave you paying several hundred percent more than you expected.

Here are some tips to consider no matter what company you choose to recovery your data:

Get a full explanation of the cost before you ship - Make sure the rate is clear. If you send your flash drive and get a different rate after it arrives, your only options are to either pay the higher rate or have them return the drive, which can takes weeks from some providers.
Make sure they are reputable - verify testimonials, just because they have worked with big entities or have published "quotes" on their website, does not mean they are the best choice.
Confusing rate explanation - if the provider makes it confusing by adding tons of explanation on how to quote you, just run! Watch out for the "*" asterisks and read the fine print, if you can find it.
Don't choose just by price alone - often times we choose the cheapest provider, and end up costing us more down the road. Choose by reputation, reliability and guarantee.
Yes, Guarantee - is worth repeating. If they can't fix it, you shouldn't have to pay.

3.5" FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) is Dead! Long live the Zipmem USB Drive!

Currently this magnetic medium is fast getting replaced by the â flash Româ drives that they also know by Pen Drive or USB Drive. This new medium is killing the elderly magnetic medium for its reliability, speed and ever growing capacity.



Do you keep in mind the last time you used the FDD drive of your computer, and for what? Chance is in case you have used it then it would be for some emergency booting of the computer, or for recovery of your broken OS. Meaning you would have not used it for knowledge transfer using this medium.

Historicallyin the past the secondary storage is always in the realm of change. Know-how and needs are always pushing the medium smaller, faster, more reliable, secure and of expanding capacity. like some ten years back the five.25â dives were replaced by this three.5â drives for smaller size and bigger capacity.

History

Paper Punch Card

History of secondary storage is calm fascinating, as it's seen the use of papers to silicon to optical medium. With each generation it gets better, faster and smaller is size and always increasing the storage capacity.

Floppy Drive (8â)

Paper Punch cards used initially as the first outside storage tool. It used paper card/roll with holes as knowledge. Meaning a hole was zero, and no hole was. Programmers used to punch the card for providing input. Card printers were there to punch the output for storage.

One time the magnetic media began to be used for storage, paper media was quickly made obsolete. Magnetic disks of round shape emerged as the standard for secondary storage tool. It became popular as it was more robust and handy than the paper roll, and could store more knowledge.

Further advancement in the material & magnetic expertise provided better density & provided much higher storage capacity in smaller area. Now the disks also began to become double sided providing even more knowledge storage area in the same size disks.

Floppy Drive (five.25â)

This media peaked with the three.5â FDD that was tiny & sturdy to be carred in the denims pocket. Its case also provided cover even for the area that is used for reading, leading to more protection from dust & humidity even when the floppy was not in any cover.

Floppy Drive (three.5â)

This drive released in 1994 by a company called Iomega could holding 100MB of knowledge. This also makes use of the magnetic coating like the regular floppy disks, usb hard drivebut of higher quality & of superior expertise. Due to this it needs specialized drives for reading & writing on this media. This made it a lovely backup drive (like tape drives), but not lovely for using it on any machine. Currently generation of Zip Disks can hold upto 250MB of knowledge.

Zip Drive

Flash Drive (USB Drive)

Also often called Pen Drive is the next revolution in secondary transportable storage tool. Initially emerged with couple of MB storage capacity, it quickly gained attraction due to its solid state rugged construction & its capability of being used on any computer equipped with USB port. Initially it needed a specific driver to be installed on the earlier OS in order to be used, but later, due to its universally open standard & rise in use of the USB port, its support was provided natively in the OS. (Windows/Macintosh/Linux supports it natively out of the box).

This standardization of protocol has lead to not only popularity of the USB flash drives, but has also provided a common way for other media to act as drive by this protocol. So now there's storage products making use of this standard to become USB drives (also called USB Mass Storage). Example includes:
- USB Hard Disk Drives
- Zip Drive with USB interface
- digital camera acting as an USB drives for accessing the photographs directly on any computer
- PDAs like Palm that already connect to the computer using USB acts as a USB drive for accessing the knowledge stored in its memory & SD/MMC Card
- Mp3 players that doubles as USB drive!!

So now virtually nothing more is necessary for this drive to work in the event you have a computer with a standard USB port. Though the manufacturers are also providing additional features to the hardware like encryption, but these features usually requires additional software/driver to be installed in order to be used. & since there is not much standard for these features yet it is mostly tool specific & is largely ignored for its lack of compatibility.

Currently one GB USB flash drives are available, & bigger drives are on the horizon.

The list of applications are getting bigger & bigger, ultimately making this drive a very popular & successful.
As mentioned above this medium is also getting popular & is popular chiefly for higher speed & capacity than what is currently provided by the USB flash drive. On the flip side it is still fragile (as having moving element) & bulkier than the flash drive.


Portable USB HDD


Last but not the least is this future product. This is the media of the future that makes use of expertise that is still in its infancy - holography. Though holography & holograms are not new & was discovered in the late 1940s, but its application for knowledge storage is something new. A company called InPhase Technologies is of the forerunners in this field that has prototyped disks that can hold 200GB to one.6TB of knowledge. This external usb driveexpertise makes use of lasers for reading & writing the knowledge.

Why FDD is dying

Using this one.44MB floppy disk drive was always bit unreliable. They can all recall the "Sector 0 Bad" error, & myriad number of utilities supporting various recovery & advanced modifications like:

- marking sectors bad (NDD - Norton Disk Doctor & its surface scan (ultimately acquired by Symantec & is part of its Norton Utilities Toolset right now). - Another popular utility was to generate another zero sector if the actual was gone bad. So what is remaining in the way of death of this magnetic medium? Only time! As of now few features still needs the magnetic floppy disk drive, like for booting for the first time, or for upgrading BIOS of the motherboard etc. This is due to itâs (FDDs) simple of programming at the lower level & more importantly for its inbuilt support in the BIOS program. So as soon as the modern BIOS start supporting the USB drives (motherboards have now began to come with this support) the floppy days are numbered.

Current Support of USB Devices by the Motherboard/BIOS

The current motherboards & BIOS have started the support of usb thumb drive as boot tool. Meaning you can have your whole operating method on this tool, or basically use it as the bootable floppy (imaging carrying your whole work including the programs & applications on a small keychain). Depending on the mode of usage resources are obtainable on the Web for configuring your USB drive. checkout the links provided below where it provides tips & tricks of doing so.

Speaking of simple of use of using this feature, the issue lies with the (Windows) OS right now that does not support making the USB drive bootable. It does let you format the USB drive & choose the file method format, but Make Booteble option is not present at all. Seldom mind as there's lot of tools & utilities obtainable (for all popular OS) that supports making it bootable, though you will must struggle a bit.

Future


As you see there is no need of Floppy Disks for any use/operation & is getting replaced speedy by the USB drives. Already major computer vendors have made FDD as optional feature. Now the time has come of the USB flash drive over the demise of the FDD.

Visit author's site for more information about the author as well as get access to more articles on various topics -

Pen drive two GB capacity obtainable with Om Nanotech Pvt. Ltd. located in different parts of the world including India, Singapore and the United States. The product list comprises of products like Ram,Micron Memory part, DRAM, storage memory cards, usb disk drive and far more.
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USB Flash Drive Price Trends

What a difference a few years can make! The USB flash drive prices of today are not very recognizable compared to those of yesterday�and that�s a nice thing. Premium USB is prepared to take you on a trip down memory lane (bad pun intended) to see how far we�ve come & where we�re headed.
First however, they must give you a small point of view on storage capacity. A number of the first commercial flash drives were 128MB & 256MB. Less than 100 images can be stored on 128MB while 256MB gives you a small over 150 images or 50 songs. Today�s average 4GB flash drive on the other hand can hold two full length movies or over two thousand images. A 16GB USB drive holds five times the flicks of its four gig counterpart. Alternately, it's the capability to store over 300,000 documents.
Now we�ve come to prices. In 2003, a standard 128MB flash drive cost $60 & a 256MB flash drive cost $100. Skip ahead years to late 2006 when a 4GB USB was priced at about $60. In early 2007, the cost of these drives dropped about $10.
Over a year later in late 2008, $60 could buy you a 16GB flash drive while $70 could even buy you 32GB. At the beginning of 2009, a 16GB drive was priced around $25. This past December, a 32GB USB flash drive was less than $40. Today, a 16GB USB drive is about $20. At Premium USB, a 4GB flash drive will cost only about $10. Additionally, today�s flash drives are not only more affordable, but they also boast more custom designs & more features like encryption or virus protection.
Flash drive prices are not immune to fluctuations, however. There's annual events that occur affecting how much you pay for these storage devices. Chinese companies supply plenty of of the parts for promotional USB drives. As a result, when Chinese New Year comes along in February, production shuts down for two to three weeks, driving up demand & therefore prices.
These USB prices usually settle down between March & April & are at a low around June before holiday production ramps up at the tail finish of the summer. The beginning of the 4th quarter often reflects a number of the lowest prices of the year. Production obstacles including facility power outages or natural disasters can also generate volatile spikes in prices.
However, as NAND flash expertise continues to evolve & improve, the long term outlook is that USB drives will only continue to boast greater capacities & capabilities at more wallet-friendly prices. Your four gig or 16 gig flash drive of tomorrow will continue to be less expensive than your 128MB drive from 8 years ago.
Do you keep in mind how much you paid for your first USB flash drive?