Anyone have any suggestions? I'm after something small and RELIABLE. I'm happy to pay more if I'm likely to get something that isn't going to flake out. If I could put it on my keyring that would also be cool (although probably nerdy).

http://xo.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/thumbdrive.jpg

Hi-Larious!

sandisk cruzer micro

nice and small

i've only ever heard of one usb flash ram stick that died & the dude that owned it put it through a clothes wash :P i've got 5 of 'em that i use as required & all i can recommend is to get a decent size... ie: 1Gb or better. they all come with a little hole to be attached to a keyring or watever afaik.

I got one and the moron company put that keyring hole on the removable lid, sure it's good if you need to pull it apart from the key ring and connect to your computer without the mass of keys, but I would rather have the data end of the thumbdrive still attached to the keyring then the lid :(

Corsair thumb drives are the go
lifetime warranty/10yrs
we swap em straight over if they are faulty as long as they havent been run over by a truck.
also they look pretty cool, made out of a wetsuit looking material.

Corsair Flash Voyager USB drives are rugged, stylish, compact, reliable, and exceptionally fast, making them ideal for transporting MP3s, digital images, presentations and more. With data transfer rates up to 19Mb/sec, Flash Voyager drives are fully Hi-Speed USB 2.0 compliant, and are backward compatible with USB 1.1. They support Plug and Play with most operating systems. Their durable rubber casing is easy to grip and water resistant. These highly portable drives are available in capacities ranging up to 4GB.

Plus a security application lets you create a hidden, password-protected partition on your Flash Voyager. Learn more.



FEATURES

Plug & Play functionality in Windows® XP, 2000, ME, Linux 2.4 and later, Mac OS 9, X and later
Security application lets you create a password-protected partition. Learn more.
Drivers on CD for Windows® 98
Lanyard, USB cable and driver CD included
Supports sustained read speed up to 19MB/sec*

Supports sustained write speed up to 13MB/sec*

Ten year warranty

Sandisk make some good stuff

Another vote for sandisk have a 128meg and 512meg cruiser micro damn reliable data never failed on me transfer rates with usb 2 is also very quick. 8-)

Ipod shuffles!

Uncle_Bob, what does "lifetime warranty/10 years" mean?

Uncle_Bob, what does "lifetime warranty/10 years" mean?

I'd guess that it means up to 10 years. 10 years for hardware would feel like a lifetime. I mean, ~10 years ago I bought a 3dfx card.

I have a keyring one it's great.

I got it from strathfield/brisbane car sound. 128mg was only like $20 or $29 and that was ages ago. I've given it a solid bashing (sand, water etc) and it's still fine.

sandisk ftw

also as demon said, get a decent sized one, i've got a 1gb one, but if I was buying one now, I'd go for 2gb - handy to throw larger 'files' onto :)

i use one of these in my phone..

http://www.mobymemory.com/images/products/2GB_miniSD_mini_SD_memory_card_small.jpg

then if i want a usb drive, i use one of these

http://www.mobymemory.com/images/products/USB2_miniSD_Flash_Stick_Memory_Card_Reader_Small.jpg

I have a lexar thumbdrive, it's great. Has a hook on it for putting on my keyring.

I just picked up a 128mb Sandisk one ($18 from JB) to tinker with (going to use it for backing stuff up and I'll buy a "real" one later).

What are people using to encrypt data? This seems to have some apps on it already but I'd rather use something open source.

Sandisk (as a company) are pretty big fyi

I'll definitely be using Password Safe ( http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/ ) for password storage, but I'd like to be able to encrypt random files as well. Any suggestions?

Browsing through SourceForge now (already found http://sourceforge.net/projects/axcrypt/ ) so will see what else I can find.

last edited by trog at 22:06:42 17/Jan/06

don't ya just love being paranoid?

also I don't plan on losing my usb key... therefore encripting the data seems pointless

You should probably cancel your car insurance while you're at it

heardy needs full comp for his computer LOL

haha reso, I was waiting for a 'don't format it joke'

it's hardly in the same league as car insurance trog, well I guess that depends on what data is on the drive... but I would hazzard a guess it would only be personal files or uni stuff...

anyways, each to their own I suppose...

I want to store some banking information on it so security is somewhat important

i use PINs (448 bit Blowfish algorithm to ensure the data are not crackable.) it includes encryption and you can run it straight off the thumbdrive.

i'm getting flashbacks from "sneakers".

That looks aight reso; I think I'll stick w/ Password Safe for that sort of stuff though. AxCrypt appears to be pretty good for general purpose encryption - in can even encrypt a file into a .exe, which when you run it will auto-decrypt it - neato!

also I don't plan on losing my usb key... therefore encripting the data seems pointless

I'm sure you didn't plan on getting herpes either.

I dont plan on leaving the seat up.
it just happens

I don't bother encrypting stuff on my usb key because I don't really store anything on it that could be used in any way. I mainly use it for transferring pictures I've taken of friends cars, or videos of them doing stuff from my house to theirs. How I love being the only one with a friggin digital camera/dv camera amongst my friends :(

can't you just use the same encryption windows has? like, right click the file & go encrypt?

is it possible to simply password the entire USB thumb drive ?? i'd like to protect my uni stuff from thieves or if i lose the stick, but constantly installing encryption software on the uni computers would be a royal pain in the arse (they are re-imaged after every log-out)...

looked at that AxCrypt .exe encryption, but it doesn't seem all that different to simply using a passworded .zip file which seems like a pain, would be awesome to somehow protect the whole disk with a password or similar and once password is in the drive is usable without entering passwords/keys for each file...

rodolphe, have a look at truecrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org/

It lets you "[encrypt] an entire hard disk partition or a device, such as USB flash drive" (similar to PGP Disk if you're familiar with that). I suspect you need the software installed, but you might be able to just keep it (unencrypted) on the USB drive.

you can password the sony micro vaults

Cryptainer appears to do the same thing as truecrypt, except cryptainer is simpler to use, and you don't have to encrypt the entire drive you can specifiy a container size... only problem is that cryptainer LE is limited to 25mb container size, too small for me. Both cryptainer and truecrypt have small 'traveller' versions you can dump on the disk so you can use it anywhere, problem with truecrypt, and why I won't be able to use it, is that you can't put the travellers version on the usb drive as the whole drive is encrypted, would need a second disk to hold the travelers application :/ unless I can partition my usb drive with a ~2mb partition for the traveller version... still trying to work out if I can partition a usb drive though.

thanks for the linky though, truecrypt is pretty cool, exactly what i wanted although I can't specify the container size :(

last edited by rodo|phe at 11:08:30 18/Jan/06

why not use pgp? i'd give you a copy but i don't know if i can trust you!? ;p heh, my old man bought a copy of pgp ages ago & the speil that comes with it is a good read.. an insight into a truely paranoid mind :P zimmermann more or less says that any public encryption method that you can freely download can't be trusted because the authors may have coded back doors or it may have been re-engineered by a third party.
if i am concerned i just rar the files & password it. sure that can be broken easily enough... but it meets the balance of my paranoia vs how far i think someone will go to unlock some random data they found :D

i'd use passworded zip/rar but a pain in the arse when you have loads of files and when you edit them you have to manually add them to the archive again etc etc

if they were just for storage that would be fine for me too

I actually have a commercial copy of PGP but only on my work PC - all my data is on a PGP Disk, but I can't access that when I'm at home and I don't feel like buying another copy of PGP.

zimmermann more or less says that any public encryption method that you can freely download can't be trusted because the authors may have coded back doors or it may have been re-engineered by a third party.

Heh, that's the exact argument most security people use when they're talking about closed-source commercial software.

for a good usb drive, I'd recommend Lexar Lightning series... they're 1/2GB, and have 22/15MB/second Read/Write speeds. Stainless steel case, and they look hot too, plus they come with lexar's 256bit AES encryption stuff...

http://www.lexar.com/image/lightning.jpg

last edited by mongie at 13:46:41 18/Jan/06