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Portable Storage Guide
Elite 4CE writes "If you're like me, you are always transporting data from home to work, and back. I was surprized at how many options there were to facilitate this.
Hardcoreware.net have posted their Portable Storage Guide for 2005, covering everything from flash based devices that fit into your pocket, to huge FireWire drives with a capacity of 400GB."
How long until there is a category for embedded DRM as described in this article?
It will probably start out with a few devices with DRM, but slowly everyone of the storage vendors will have a DRM solution. It will only be a matter of time, really.
That said, the Seagate 100GB unit looks sweet.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I just use the internet, it's great.
Can never have enough space to keep all you want.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
I'd say it's more like "amasing"... really, typos are not that "amuzing".
My website
We have used some of the 250GB Western Digitals here and a known fault is that, if you remove the drive improperly, it will corrupt the entire drive. Rendering useless all 200+ gigs of info on there. But yeah, other than that, they work great! So be careful how you unplug and always use the "Remove Drive" feature.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
my Zen Micro (5GB) as well as an external (duh) 80GB USB Western Digital USB drive when needed - between the two I have not had any problems tranferring data - for the most part I've been using my micro, creating a 2.5 GB partition for data and the remainder for my music
With the ability to push to my house from work at over 8 Mbps, I rarely worry about this
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
"If you're like me, you are always transporting data from home to work, and back."
No, I'm not like you. I like to keep work at work, and out of my home, where I have better things to do than work.
Slashdotted already. Maybe they can put the article on one of these devices and send one to each of us?
Bradley Holt
I just VPN into my work PC and use mapped drived to move data. No need to move data and risk losing it because of some bump on the road.
I used to. It worked well. But after having a thumb drive for a month I wouldn't switch back. I have my entire "my documents" and development tree stored on my thumb drive. It is always the latest and most updated version. When I arrive at work, I copy it over. When I leave work, i copy from the computer to the thumb drive. Same as home. The internet worked ... unless internet was out at home. Or if internet was out at work. And the data was too preicous not to have even for a few hours. And when you are in an environment where internet traffic is heavily monitored (and pushing upwards of 100M) the thumb drive reigns supreme.
-everphilski-
I swear.. we're all guilty here. Please stop lying. We all use the floppy disk. I don't care who you are (but more likely so if you're a government employee), you have a green floppy disk in your briefcase that has a masking-tape label on it written with pencil..
I see this all the time.. people thinking they're cool on campus with their laptop and 1GB USB thumb drive.. plugging in a floppy to get at the 1.44mb of data they really need.
LONG LIVE THE FLOPPY! *salute*
--- We need more Ron Paul!
I was going to suggest the iPod Nano as a good portable storage device, but now I am having second thoughts. Better scratch that idea!
Not saying Poster is security risk. But as someone who does security audits for banks, "taking data home" ie becoming more and more of a Security risk. It is easy for an employee to copy, burn, etc information with customer data with it. Another issue is smaller banks don't have the dedicated resources to devote to proper DRM and OEMS like Dell often include CD-Rs and make USB flash drives so cheap that it gets more and more troublesom to block it.
I use a 1GB PQI Stick, I don't think there's a smaller, cheaper, and more reliable option for the same capacity.
If you're like me, you are always transporting data from home to work, and back.
And if you're a cheap, lazy bastard like me, you just email everything back and forth. (I mean, sure I can use my 512MB MuVo TX FM as a flash drive, but that's so much effort...)
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
I see they missed the most important device of all, the mega-uber-1337-6.7GHz, eleventy-billion TB laptop
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Very useful. Have it in my wallet. Anybody have any problems with premature removal? Hope it doesn't blow out all the rest of my data if I have to run quick and disconnect while ul/dl.
So when your iPod nano is so scratched you can't read the screen, treat it as a 2 or 4GB flash drive with integrated iPod Shuffle functionality!
In fact for a 2 or 4 GB flash drive it isn't a bad price really, although most sensible people would jump up to a portable 2.5" Firewire drive at about the same price and not worry about the extra size.
Coralized
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
I have one at home so thanks a lot for the warning. Is the "Remove Drive" thing some software thing I activate thru my XP laptop or is it a button on the drive itself? I currently have my USB2.0 external drive connected directly into my router thru USB and then I map it as a network drive on my Centrino wireless laptop.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
One large laptop, two power bricks, and a 160 gig usb 2 drive go with me whenever I want to use my laptop at school. I can watch napoleon dynamite any time I want, though.
I have freaks! I did something right...
How do you encrypt your data on portable storage devices?
I've been thinking about this problem for a while now and trying to find the perfect balance between physical size of the device and the amount of storage that it holds.
I have approximately 20GB of data that I wish to transport back and forth to home, work and whereever there is a computer that I can work on. I've cut out all the misc. stuff and the music files and have gotten it down to less then 4GB but there isn't a cheap thumbdrive that I've seen yet for the capacity.
Really though, I would like to carry ALL of my music and misc. stuff because I'm a packrat and just like having everything with me. I've been using a USB hard drive but this is comparatively bulky and really only appropriate for semi-permanent places like taking home on the weekend. I would really like a thumbdrive.
What products have you found that fill this?
"What the hell is an aluminum falcon?"
I use my phone to carry data with me. I always bring it with me anyway, and it's got a 512 MB MemoryStick in it. When I feel a little bit more rich, I'll get a 2 GB one in it's stead.
Yes, I need a data cable but there's always one or two to borrow from co-workers.
Oh and it's got a very nice mp3 player and a 2 Mpixel camera to boot! I love that little thing... It's a Sony Ericsson W800.
:wq!
I use this USB enclosure for only 15 bucks shipped, combined with a cheap laptop hard drive. It fits in your pocket, is dirt cheap, does NOT need an external powersupply, and can be as nearly large (in capacity) as you want.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Have you been living in a cave?
It will be a little icon on the tray of your task manager bar. Typically in the lower right corner. When you click it it brings up any drive which is attached externally (and on laptops sometimes internally) and asks if you want to stop the drive. After clicking it will let you know that it is safe to remove the drive.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
http://www.sandisk.com/pressrelease/20050219a.htm
It's a 1G SD card.. an SD card you say.. what's so special.. OK
1. is x66 speed - great for video/continuous frames on a camera
2. compatible with my Canon compact and TREO 650
3. It has a built-in USB connector!!!!! No need for extra adaptors!!
A great idea.. as a SD card dual use it with an MP3 palyer, camera or phone etc.. plug it in to your USB at work or home!!
For those of you who have USB flash drives or just about any other type of portable media, check out http://www.no-install.com/ Tons of applications that you can run from your portable media and not have to worry about losing your settings betweeb different machines.
It seems they only tested the hardware on Windows; there is no info on Linux or OS X support/testing. I'm not sure if all drives mentioned can even be used on other OSes, or if there still are driver issues. This is especially bothersome as they seem to install any software provided by the respective manufacturers before benchmarking the drives; but they don't mention if this includes installing custom drivers, or if the software in each case consists simply of data management tools.
Since they are already reviewing the 400G firewire drive, they might as well go one step up and review the Buffalo TeraStation too! What I really want to know is if the unit's four drives can be swapped out for bigger capacity ones, and not a single review mentions this - the only cheap RAID5 out-of-box solution and hardly ever a mention on /.
I have been looking for decent answers about this for a long time, so here i go:
What is a good way to have redundant external storage with linux? I'm thinking like mirroring "RAID" with two external USB hard drives.
I ask this because I recently lost a good deal of data when a harddrive failed when I didn't have a copy of a lot of my stuff on my laptop. I recovered some, but I'd like to not have to worry about it again.
Suggestions?
Thank you.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
What is the point of this article? To lists ways you can carry data? That is news?
What about books(printed material), CDs, tatoos, etc?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Had this problem before at work! Sometimes puns elude me.
That's cool but I get by with 60KB/s download from my house. The local IP, Cox, has bowed to Windoze problems. If they did not crimp the upload, the botnet would soak up everyone's bandwith and no one would have anything. Curse you and your stupid OS, Bill Gates!
My main concern with work to home connections is also Windoze. Putting a secure shell client on Windoze is kind of like putting a pad lock on paper bag. With all the full auto Microsoft worms carrying keyloggers and the half life of windoze on a network being 12 minutes, it would not take long at all for my home box to get rooted out. I won't Windoze to do anything but connect to my http server so windoze communications are one way.
The cure is to use a bootable CD or laptop at work, if your employer is clueless enough to still be using windoze. Right now, you can use knoppix, mepis or even the FSF bootable ID card to get things back and forth. Then you boot off your employers choice of pain an suffer another long and unproductive day of single screen GUI, no place keeping reboot daily, BSoD hell. At least the data transfer will go well.
With Paladium or sufficiently stupid corporate policy, you won't even be able to do that. That's the way things go.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
That label idea has merit, but I'm too lazy to follow through. Once upon a time, I labled one "transfer disk."
Yeah, I carry a floppy as a last resort in the world of pain. You need several layers of prophylactic to get anything off a windoze box. A boot CD may not always work well with Bill Gate's fucked up device specs (think winmodem, wep, etc) or idea of the interweb (aka LAN) where you are. I could email to gmail, but that would be followed by a stream of spam. Many big dumb companies take away your USB devices. Sometimes you are left with nothing but that 1.44 MB to do your job.
Most of the time, I just use my nice little Debian laptop. Konqueror's built in sftp support blows everything else away.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm glad my university freely distributes thumb drives, so I don't blow out my data during ul/dl. I keep mine in my wallet as well. The reason I use the thumb drive is to avoid premature removal. However, I'm posting on /., and an engineering student, which means there isn't any ul/dl to speak of.
SAILING MISHAP
With the Elite AL dual drive firewire enclosure from Other World Computing you can pack around 1000GB.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/E liteAL/RAID/
I was a bit disappointed that they didn't cover any of the new USB/Firewire dual drive RAID0/1 devices. I'd love to have a RAID1 backup device I could unplug and move between offices. Anyone have any info on how to roll your own?
The only time I ever had a problem with it was when I formatted it with NTFS; I forgot about that stupid caching stuff and took it out w/o doing the whole "stop/eject" thing and lost all my data. It's now formatted as FAT32 so I don't have to worry about it anymore.
Do I still have to format the 400gb drive as Fat32 to get both my Mac and Windows XP box to read it? Why hasn't anybody come up with a file system that supports large capacity portable drives on every OS?
Comment of the year
Yeah baby! And I'm not kidding.
Actually use the internet if I'm moving less than 3 GBs....
(en tea)
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
First of all, the "remove drive" feature is abolutely useless in Linux.
Secondly, it's not a umount issue. Rather, it seems to be an issue with the firmware on the drive. And partly the Linux driver. If you remove the USB cable, it can cause either or both to get screwed up.
I've had this happen to me twice with Linux. The first time, I mistakenly thought that all the data was gone, as it sure looked like it. The second time, I played around with recycling power on the disk, as well as the PC. Lo and behold, everything was still there.
FYI.
A storage guide I can carry around with me!
I have one of those Swissbit knife and I just love it. It's so small and comes with the knife feature. However, one of the biggest thing is everyone attached it to keychain and put in pocket ---> bad for traveling!! I was lucky the Toronto airport security allow me to pay $5 to send it back home instead of throwing it away... OT, I really wonder if the current airport security is hitting hard on Swiss Army Knife bottomline.
You are most welcome, and I'm returning the favor of your friending as well.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Of course, the extra functionality comes with a price, but if the rtfa already put into the comparision the victorinox one, that have the storage plus screwdriver/knife/etc, why dont put there other kind of integrated devices?
I'm upgrading my porn collection to higher resolutions for TB HDs. Nothing quite like a high rez girl.
That "review" was vacuuous. In the portable HDD class, I have three favorites: 1) the I/O Magic Gigabank Elite 40 40GB 1.8" HDD, which is completely single-USB port powered, cool looking, has a built-in short USB cable, and is smaller than portable 2.5" HDD's -- see http://www.iomagic.com/gigabank/IUSB40HD18.asp. 2) The Memorex 4GB Mega Travel Drive, which looks like that Hitachi 4GB CF HDD packaged in a little box with a built-in USB connector, and includes a cool little leather case -- see http://www.memorex.com/html/products_detail.php?se ction=3&CID=12&SID=16&PID=1000&FID=151&opento=12#. 3) The Freecom FHD-XS 60GB 1.8" HDD, only about 3" square, bus powered with built-in USB connector -- see http://www.freecom.com/US-Product.asp?ID=999310&pa ge=USHARDDRIVES&SCatID=999314. I own all three of these -- each has a use, and I love them.
Doug Jensen
A bare 3 1/2" drive is far smaller than any of my encased USB 3 1/2" drives.
I would like to slip a SATA 3 1/2" bare drive into an open (no top or sides,
just a bottom and front, often essentially just a bar with a USB cable) USB "case".
For example, "forensic" open cases, which are designed for those extracting data
from drives gone bad, so the user needs to quickly insert and remove disk drives.
While the forensic "cases" I have seen are open, and some handle SATA,
and many will disable writing (always) to the drive, I want all these aspects.
I want an open case (no fan, no sides) that takes SATA drives,
and allows me to switch writing either on or off.
A full external case with 3 1/2" drive is too bulky for any brief case I have had.
But I can easily put a 3 1/2" drive into a Seagate plastic container or OEM foam container,
then insert it into my briefcase or lunchbox.
The ability to switch write on/off is particularly useful for security.
You could install your operating system on such an external USB drive,
switch off write (probably reboot somewhere in the timeline),
preventing anyone from changing your hard drive data!
Use FTP. Pretty much everybody has high-speed internet connections nowadays.
You can also use SSL or TLS over FTP to make secure connections.
Most people dont need transfer large data, there are cheap USB memory sticks.
USB memory sticks will be able to store more and more, also MP3 players, etc...
Dont buy DRM products.
I solved my own "problem" of wanting to carry with me not only my entire digital library of documents, photos, music, etc., but the same boot volume as well. I have two Seagate 100GB 2.5" drives configured as a FireWire RAID yielding a single 200GB volume that is my boot volume and contains my (encrypted) home directory under Mac OSX 10.4. My motivation was to avoid carrying a laptop to/from work on my bike for 26 miles each day. I find the ability of Mac OSX to not only boot from an external FireWire RAID, but also having the same install boot on any contemporary Mac hardware (PowerBook at home, G5 tower at work) to be very convienent.
What happens if you lose the thumb drive? Then someone *else* has your entire document tree.
I hope you encrypted its contents, at least?
I have a 250GB harddrive connected via USB to my PC. Its an easy way to transport large ammounts of data very fast but i have one problem with it. Some of the data i use is sensitive and so i want to encrypt it. But there seems to be no way to get all of the following:
- encryption
- files > 4GB
- accessable (read/write) under linux and XP
Any tips?
TrueCrypt will support Linux in the near(?) future.
FreeOTFE can work with volumes created in linux.
I usually "carry" thing between home and office through FTP servers. I have one server set up in each location. Isn't it the cheapest thing to do, specially when the things you carry are not that big?
Did anyone else get the feeling they were comparing apples to oranges?
I thought the key drive section was well done, but really shouldn't this have been 2 articles? One comparing flash drives and one comparing portable hard drives?
And speaking of hard drives, of course you are going to look at Seagate, but if you are doing a comparison guide wouldn't you look at a couple of other brands too? This section seemed more like an infomercial than an actual objective comparison.