1GB USB Drive on a Keychain

sparcv9 writes "JMTek looks to be about ready to release a line of keychain-sized USB drives, ranging in capacity from 16MB to 1GB. The 1GB models are a bit pricey at almost $900US, but the 16, 32 and 64MB models are all under $100. These devices require no external power supply, claim a data retention of 10 years, and are 'driverless' -- which means that the drives will work under Linux, according to JMTek (see the 'Operating Systems' row in the specs table.)"

Less than 1CM Thick? Use it in a camera!

According to the product spec page:


67mm w/cap x 20mm x 9mm
60mm w/o cap x 20mm x 9mm

I'm not sure they have anything more than prototypes at the moment, but this is still a pretty nifty advance for people who need more storage for digital video and digital photography.

What a nightmare for corporations

Think of the opportunities for corporate espionage with these type of things. Is there a way to disable USB mass-storage devices in XP or 2000?

Drivers built into OS

USB defines a generic storage device. A wide range of products, from actual harddrives to pseudo-drives can be used without any *additional* device drivers. This is why Win98 needs an update -- it didn't come with the generic storage device drivers.

Perhaps "Generic Drivered"?

It appears that it uses some form of generic disk storage protocol.

In recent Linux releases, there is a USB_STORAGE driver that can be included in the kernel; I would presume that's what they're referring to, at least vis-a-vis Linux support.

It's entirely likely that three years ago, W98 didn't include drivers for disk storage devices, thus meaning that if you want to use the device with W98, you need such a "generic driver."

Similarly, Windows NT 4 is getting pretty old; it likely didn't include support for USB storage devices either.

In a sense, this may be regarded kind of like having SCSI support. You do need a SCSI driver to access SCSI devices, but once you've got that, there's no special driver for Seagate drives as compared to Quantum or IBM...

IBM Disk on Key

I've got one of the IBM keychain dealies. It's only 8mb, but it's actually quite handy for data transfers. My parents have a slow modem (as opposed to a fast one? anyway) at their house and no CD burner. Sometimes I have to get some work done there and the 8mb of the IBM fits all of my Excel sheets just fine.

While 8mb has been fine for the 6 months I've had the thing, of course these new releases will force me to upgrade.

On thing though, its a serious Pain In The Ass to try and plug one of these things in blind. I've got a USB hub at home, but they really aren't all that common yet.

Pete

Re:1GB = 900? Yeah right

How many PDAs do you know with 1 GIG of storage?

Seriously! And who the hell compares the functionality of a batteryless keychain hard drive with no moving parts to a freaking PDA! The only way to get a gig on a PDA is to find one that takes CompactFlash and use the IBM 1GB CompactFlash microdrive... complete with moving parts!

You've got to want this for size or coolness...

... because CD-R media are a heck of a lot cheaper until you've burned quite a few. At least the price will eventually come down.

But I really don't see what it's good for. Storing lots of stuff? CD-R or CD-RW; your computer probably has a drive already, and you can stash more data than even the 1/2 GB drive. Holding encryption keys? You want something a lot smaller, cheaper and more rugged. Having something neat to put in your pocket? Okay, but that's not going to sell lots of them.

Re:You've got to want this for size or coolness...

Well, I can tell you what is bad for...Security. Especially with win2000/XP automatic detection of USB devices it could be used as a effective delivery device for worm/virus packages to machines without or with protected email and Internet access. With the 1gig size you could certainly steal a lot of data very easily. So what if you the most secure firewall and email protection. Are you screening your maintenance people, your temp workers? With a little social engineering this device could be very dangerous, easy to conceal, even through metal detectors with the phrase "Oh, my keys set it off". Sorry if I'm little excited about it, I'm just a Spy Novel fan and have a really good caffeine buzz too.

Dell has been selling 8-32Mb [dell.com] versions for more than a year, but they require a driver install

Buy those things locally

Various companies make them (flash USB key drives), they are a VERY nice solution for sneakerneting, however the reliability sometimes SUCKS (typical consumer grade, not tested before shipping).

We ordered 2 of em from a different company, one worked fine and dandy, the other had a bad connection somewhere internally and would crash the USB bus and only mount about 1/8 of the time. They were $80 each for 64 MB versions (a good price, mind you), but next time, we will only buy locally, so that returns can be much easier.

Christ in a squeeze-bottle

These are teensy little flash memory cards with USB connectors and IDE-over-USB emulation like most of today's flash-memory technologies.

The prices are the same or a smidgen higher than the same size CompactFlash, Smartmedia, Memory Stick or MMC cards.

And they've been out for more than a year, though the 512MB and 1GB models are pretty recent. The idea is they're an alternative to shuttling a small batch of files around on a Zip disk or such, or burning a CD.

As for actual hard drives, for half that $900 figure you can get a PC Card drive for your laptop that holds 5GB though like IBM Microdrives it's obviously a bit more delicate. And you can get pocket-sized 30GB Firewire and USB 2 drives for the same $400 or so these days.

What doesn't get posted to Slashdot these days? When will we be hearing about someone discovering Dim Sum? Or asking for resources on learning how to drive a stick-shift?

Geeky Lamentations

• Shit! I just gouged my keychain drive with my Leatherman tool!
• Man, all I did was just sat down my 1GB pocket drive got crushed--there goes $900!

Sounds like a good, cynical business model--very fragile yet expensive products target-marketed to savvy techies with high disposable incomes.

some downsides

The read speed is 800kbytes/sec and the write speed is 500Kbytes/sec. They sound cool and all, but thats just like a glorified CDRW.

I can already stick a cdrw in my pocket :)

make your own

Grab yourself a Sandisk SDDR-31 CF reader, cut it apart. Buy a USB plug from digikey, cut off most of the cable and solder the new plug very close to the rest of the the part you ripped out. Buy yourself an IBM 340MB ($155) or a 1G ($310) microdrive. Plug it into the pins on the connector you ripped out of the CF reader.

Make yourself a cheap mold out of a little plastic container with a hole cut in the side for the USB plug to stick out of, put your electronics in it and fill it with that 2 part polymer stuff. Instant pocket 1G drive, for under $350.

Encryption Key

You could store one hell of an encryption key on that keychain.

How many bit encryption would that be?

works on audrey?

Anyone know if this will wokr on the 3Com Audrey? I haven't been able to find out if generic USB storage devices work on QNX...

I've got a 128MB DiskOnKey - these rock!

I just recently started using a DiskOnkey (the 128MB model), and it's a terrific device. They cost about $150 each, and it's about 50% longer (and about 5 or so mm wider) than the Leatherman Micra I carry on my keychain, just to give you a size idea. There are smaller devices (like the Q Drive), but the DiskOnKey is rugged as hell, and so far has stood up to quite the beating.

What's it good for? Well, in my case, I'm using it to hold a set of Windows sysadmin tools (a VNC installer, Terminal Server client software, and a few other utilities), along with a full electronic copy of my company DR plan, and a ton of policy/procedure documents. With all that, I still have room to shuttle files around as well.

In fact, it's been so handy that we're replacing our printed copies of many off-site manuals with these. That way, it's much easier to keep up-to-date, and all we need to access everything is a computer with USB support and the ability to read HTML, PDF, and Word documents.

The coolest thing I found is that they're bootable, too - I just need to put an OS on one and it's an even better toolkit. Is the storage as cost-effective as CD-ROM? Of course not - it doesn't hold nearly as much, and the 128MB device, as I mentioned, cost $150. But it's far more rugged than a CD, and can be used in all sorts of circumstances where a CD can't. Heck, even a lot of the stripped-down PCs that are used in corporate IT shops have free USB ports.

GnuPG and Whisper32

I, too, have the IBM 8MB model. First of all, its AWESOME for storing my GnuPG keyring, and my Whisper32 password file. I finally feel like I'm doing GnuPG the right way.. like the extremists keeping the floppy in their pocket, inserting it only at the moments you need it for encrypting/decrypting. Now to move my critical private files to my pure USB PC and gpg 'em. Should make for a secure, console-access file server.

For the remaining 7.8MB, I keep a bunch of small files that I would need most when I don't have my Thinkpad around -- my Notes ID file, some presentations that I've been working on for clients, and all the things I forget to save when I blow away the laptop.. the ethernet and modem drivers for one! (That's a mean catch-22) I also keep small installers that often give me trouble when downloading.. putty, AdAware spyware removal tool, Netscape 6 installer, LeetSpeak for genning passwords, Whisper32, and AIM95N.

Please people, stop comparing it to a PDA. They don't serve the same purpose at all.

Made our own!

My Sony Clie have proggie called MS Import (MS=Memory Stick) which when running makes it
behave like USB storage device. I just put my Memory Stick card into it, run this program, plug it via
USB cable to Linux and I can mount it as SCSI drive,
having access to all my files on it. Best thing about it, is that you can have several cards.

Yes, it is bigger than keychain, but what the heck,
I carry my PDA with me all the time anyway!