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Hardware

How Reliable are USB Memory Keys? 38

Posted by Cliff from the new-tech-checkup dept.
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."
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How Reliable are USB Memory Keys? More

How Reliable are USB Memory Keys?

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  • IBM Keys (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tuzanor ( 125152 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:53PM (#2615529) Homepage
    The IBM memory keys are reliable enough. Mine came with my floppyless Thinkpad and its on my keychain. Though its only 8MB Its survived being thrown on the table every day, dangling and hitting the door every time i use a regular key, and other general abuse. Still works fine.

    My only gripe about it is when you gotta use it on computers that only have USB drives on the back. they are DAMN annoying. Oh, and maybe it could hold a bit more..say at least 32 megs.

    • IBM is selling a 32 Meg key for $89.00 USD retail.
      http://commerce.www.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce/Pr od uctDisplay?prrfnbr=2165737&cntrfnbr=1&prmenbr=1&cn try=840&lang=en_US
      • ya, but the one that came with my thinkpad is only 8mb :-( Unless the 32 meg ones now come standard with all new IBM computers there still is the fundamental probelem that most portable memory is too small for casualuse. I wish they would install compact flash card slots in all computers so that way as memory increases we wouldn't have to buy new drives...which is why the floppy has stayed around for so long.
  • 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.


    Not yet. Presently, you can't boot from a USB device, but you *could* create a boot CD/floppy that supports USB, then work from the USB device after you boot.


    Now a firewire keychain would absolutely rock. Sooooo faaaaast.

    • umm, yes you can boot from a USB memory device..
      • You're both right and wrong. It depends on your BIOS. On my BIOS, for example, I can't boot from USB, but on other computers, it should (theoretically--haven't tried) work. Wish I could tell you which ones work; my BIOS is Award 6.0. If anyone can post BIOSes that allow booting from USB, please tell me.

        :Peter
        • well of course it has to do with the bios, since its the software that boots from the media, whatever it may be. What was said earlier is that you CAN'T boot from a USB device, which, of course, isn't true.
    • Got this from info from http://www.diskonkey.com , Section General FAQ's.

      Can the DiskOnKey be used as a bootdisk? Yes. Some BIOS versions currently support the DiskOnKey as a bootable device. Two well known O/S's are from Compaq and IBM (Phoenix BIOS). There may be others that support the DiskOnKey as a bootable device. It is recommended to contact your BIOS vendor to check for capability. The bootability of the DiskOnKey is capable in the latest version of the DiskOnKey. See the FAQ on DiskOnKey differences to determine if your DiskOnKey is bootable or not.

  • funny you should mention this... (Score:3, Informative)

    by cornflux ( 168139 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @05:32PM (#2615734)
    ...because I've been thinking about getting one of these, too.

    The problems that I see with them is that, from reading up on various web sites, for at least some of them you'll need to carry around a driver disk with you, too.

    Not exactly convenient. (Unless you're cool with carting around a 3.5" floppy or cd...)

    I'd love to hear from people who have used one of these devices, driver disk-free, successfully.

    Me thinks these would make nifty Christmas presents/stocking stuffers.
    • I bought mine from -- someone (it has a Q logo on it) before they had the Windows 2000 drivers on it. They weren't really keen to let me try alpha drivers, and then were slow making the final version public. USB Linux support then was iffy, but better now. Haven't tried it with Linux.

      End result: I have an expensive keychain sitting totally unused in a drawer.

      The OS must recognize it, from the get-go, without loading drivers from floppy. The price must be reasonable (this one was overpriced, and the price has gone up since I bought it). These things should have masqueraded as something else to the OS, like a USB floppy or CD or hard drive, or something like that.
      • Yours is made by a company called Agatetech [agatetech.com].

        If your not using yours, I'd be interested in buying it if your want to sell it. My friend saw my 32MB Q drive and he wants one.

  • The only similar product I know about are made by iButton [ibutton.com]. 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.

    • 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.

      You can get USB dongles for the iButton.

      However, they are really for different applications. iButtons are for applications where you need tamper-resistant security and built-in cryptographic operations, not for transporting data between systems (I think the biggest memory capacity is something like 134 KBytes).

      The door lock is a good example - a regular USB disk wouldn't be very secure, because any secret codes on it could be copied to another device. The iButton will not allow you to extract its secret key, but it will let you verify that a particular key is present (by signing a challenge, which is then verified against a public key).
  • I have an 8mb Disk-on-Key, and it works great with Linux (modprobe usb-storage ; mount /dev/sda1/ /mnt/dok), Windows 2000 (no need for drivers, or, for that matter, even administrative rights; it installs great as a normal user), and Windows ME. A friend of mine has one also, and it works with Windows95 after the driver installation.

    Like the original poster, I store gpg and ssh keys on it, and complete ssh distributions for several platforms.

    My only complaint is that I and my friend have broke the plastic case within weeks of getting them. I had mine replaced by M-Systems at no cost to me (except shipping and inconvenience), but he just Elmer's Glued his back together. The electronics survived both times

    For the ~$60 I paid, it has been worth it to have a portable ssh client and my keys with me.

  • This sounds a lot like ThumbDrive [thumbdrive.com]. They have a fairly inexpensive product line.

  • .. (Score:3, Informative)

    by LiNT_ ( 65569 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @06:46PM (#2616176)
    I have an Agatetech [agatetech.com] "Q" USB harddrive. It's amazing how handy these things are.

    Sad story. I've been keeping my financial data in an excel spreadsheet on a floppy for over a year. Despite the horrendous history of floppies, I never lost data. About a month after I bought my "Q" drive I had it plugged into my Win98 box when the power went out. Once I regained power I tried to use the drive but the filesystem was fucked. Everytime I tried to access the drive I'd get something to the effect of "Can't access file system. Would you like to format"? I tried emailing Agatetech support to see if they had any recovery utilities. I never heard a response. In the end I formatted and called it a loss.

    Agatetech has the coolest looking drive IMO but thier support sucks ass and I wouldn't put too much trust in thier reliability.

    For those who are intersted, here are some manufacturers:
    Agatetech [agatetech.com] :: Thumbdrive [thumbdrive.com] :: FlashDIO [tnm.co.kr] :: DiskOnKey [diskonkey.com]

  • at work i use NT and at home OS X. I find it to be extremely handy for carrying source code to and from work.
    incidentally, OS X.1 added support for the IBM keydrive.
    additionally, i think diskonkey [diskonkey.com] make all of the IBM keys, although diskonkey come in 128 meg versions, and i only see 8 meg ones on IBM's site.
  • Who uses this stuff?

    scp is where it's at. If it doesn't have a 'net connection, it isn't really a computer, and I don't really want to use it anyway.
    And yes, I use Windows sometimes. I just use pscp (just look for "putty" in Google), or, if I am really lucky, I use the Cygwin port of scp. Or, sometimes I just open my Linux desktop with any handy web browser with Java thanks to VNC.

    Don't get my wrong. I have boot floppies, install CDs, backup CDs, etc. But I don't hump that crap around with me.

    Hrumph. Portable media. How quaint. Or as I have seen several others say here, how 20th century.

    -Peter
    • Sometimes the connection is too slow to let you just SCP or download putty... I find that keeping putty on a floppy is worth the trouble when I'm on a very slow dialup connection *gasp* and I have limited time... Its just easier in some situations.
    • scp is where it's at. If it doesn't have a 'net connection, it isn't really a computer, and I don't really want to use it anyway.

      I've done a lot of work on very serious computers behind very serious firewalls - air gaps in some cases. All networked, sure, but absolutely no chance of getting to anything on the public Internet, let alone installing un-audited software (within the next n weeks, anyway). Removeable media is the only way to move data between installations like that. Write-only, cryptographically signed media at that.

      If SecurID can be trusted by places like this, I expect there will be USB solid-state storage devices certified soon. Ultimately, once the technology is trusted, it's about trusting the people carrying it.

  • My experiences (Score:3, Informative)

    by PeterClark ( 324270 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @12:04AM (#2617573) Journal
    First of all, the IBM Memory Key and M-System's DiskOnKey are one and the same, merely rebranded. Of the products that are currently on the market, I found the Memory Key/DiskOnKey the best of the lot. Why? Because it is compliant with the USB mass storage protocol. In essence, it says, "I'm just another hard drive" to any OS that supports USB mass storage (WinMe, Win2000, WinXP, Linux 2.4+, Mac9.6, OSX). All the others (Thumbdrive, AgateTech's Qdrive, JMTek's USBdrive) have their own proprietary system, which requires drivers wherever you go. Of course, with Windows, you still need to do the whole reboot sequence (pain in the butt), but unless you run Win98, you don't need to carry around a floppy disk with the drivers or go to the web site to download them.

    I have used my DiskOnKey for only a month now, but so far I've had no complaints. No moving parts, so it can get jostled plenty without damage. It works just fine under Linux, something that the others can't do (Thumbdrive has been promising drivers for Linux "real soon now" since last year; the others don't even bother). Since it's a vfat file system, I can merrily transfer files between 'doze and Linux. Haven't tried Mac, but I imagine there shouldn't be a problem, as vfat is supported by Macs as well.

    I got mine (8mb version) on eBay for $30 bucks. Some guy was selling them, and since it was cheaper than the $45 (the cheapest I could find), I grabbed it. Expect the prices to fall even more, though; you pay a hefty price for early adoption.

    One last thing: Thumbdrive is supposedly coming out with the Thumbdrive Smart, which is supposedly going to support the USB mass storage protocol. If it ever makes it past the vaporware stage, you'll find it at http://www.trekstorusa.com/ThumbDriveSmart.html

    :Peter
  • ...for $25.

    Check it out at

    http://commerce.www.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce/Ca te goryDisplay?cntrfnbr=1&cgmenbr=1&cntry=840&lang=en _US&cgrfnbr=2118577.
  • I work for a college who issues laptops to each student that is admitted (about 650). This year we started giving each student an IBM memory key along with the laptop. The biggest problems we've had are that since they are small they are easily lost and easy to break. Of course, it could just be that we have some irresponsible students.
  • I'm surprised no one has mentioned the USB Pen Drive [pendrive.com] as an alternative to DiskOnKey [diskonkey.com] . The form factor is similar to DiskOnKey and Pendrive claims to plug and play: no drivers required (absolutely required for me). The pen drive also costs less per MB: $31 for 16MB at [meritline.com] vs. $30 for an 8MB diskonkey).

    I just ordered one so I'll soon find out if it lives up to it's claims.

    ---


  • And even if you do, but you want it to be more secure: www.ibutton.com has a java based crypto-ibutton with 192K of memory for storing secret keys, and signing, so the secret key never has to leave the iButton. They sell a USB key-fob to go with it... On the down side, there's not a lot of software, and it doesn't appear to be a drive to the OS.

    I've also got a Daisy Diva MP3 player (http://www.mydivaplayer.com/HTML/products.html). It's really small, takes compact-flash (type 1), acts like a USB drive (no drivers, at least for Win2K and OS-X (latest)). On the other hand, it feels cheap, but part of that is because it's so light.

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