How Reliable are USB Memory Keys?

quecojones asks: "I've been thnking about getting one of those IBM memory keys. IBM's device seems a bit expensive, but I've found a few others made by JM Tek and M-Systems in a variety of sizes (16MB-1GB). They're suposed to work with Windows [98|ME|2K|XP], MacOS, and Linux. Just how reliable are these things? I figure they'd make a great little backup device. I could use one of these to keep my PGP keyrings, my PasswordSafe database, and a few other files. Why aren't these things made by other companies? It seems like a perfect floppy replacement. Another thing is, can I boot a computer with one of these things? If I get one of the larger ones (512MB-1GB), could I just install Linux on it and boot from it. It would make trying out different Linux distributions a lot easier. Jus try each one out on the USB drive to figure out which one you prefer and then install it on the HDD."

Comments

Similar products from ibutton

[Manax]

The only similar product I know about are made by iButton. I like the iButton products because they have a nifty form factor, little stainless steel buttons, that can be attached to anything, including rings & keychains. They even have door locks (which I can't seem to find at the moment), among other things. I even picked up a developer's kit for cheap.

However, I think the IBM solution is more practical and widely usable... For instance, it has higher memory densities, and USB is all over the place.

Again, though, the ibutton has a bunch of built-in security features and is pretty cheap.

I guess, like so many things, it depends on the application.