USB "keys"

[Engineer]

I have no idea which forum this is best in?

I just saw these and thought they were interesting for people interested in locks and keys...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/02/lacies-new-sally-struthers-approved-usb-key-drives/

Now all you need to do is put a sticker around one of your USB ports to make it look like a keyway in a lock...

[5thcorps]

Anything approved by Sally Struthers has to be pretty incredible!!!!!!!!

[femurat]

... Now all you need to do is put a sticker around one of your USB ports to make it look like a keyway in a lock...

...hoping nobody tries to turn it!

[raimundo]

I have a thumb drive, transend is the brand, ten bucks at target, you know how they come with bundled software, this one says it can be used as a key to secure and unlock your computer.
I plugged it into this netbook I bought yesterday, the machine dosent even recognize it. won't even tell me the number of open bytes in the devise. Yippiee, now I can break lose or have fail a devise that can bring down my computer! No thanks.

[Engineer]

I remember reading that XP (and Vista?) have a little feature that you can use and it make a software key that you put on a USB flash drive, disk or something like that. The computer than can only be started up with that device connected.

You are quite right that flash devices do break down though, so if that is the only copy of your software key, you are in trouble.

Flash devices like thumb drives or even the cards for cameras, phones, etc. do not last forever, they have a rating of usually something like 100,000 writes. Sadly as you found out, that cannot be guaranteed though.

Frightening though though that if anything happened to one with vital data on - Reminds me I must go and back up mine again! Thanks for the reminder.