http://main.linuxfocus.org/~guido/usb/
The USB support in Linux is very good. As opposed to other common operating systems you often do not need a special driver. However some devices require special settings or are not covered from an application protocol point of view by the USB specifications or other publicly available specification. It's always a good idea to first search for supported devices in the Linux USB database at www.qbik.ch/usb/devices. I would do that even if you do not need the device to work under Linux. It gives you more flexibility and freedom.
This device is a usb mass storage device and according to the description from the chip manufacture (http://www.neodio.com.tw/nd-5010.htm) it should be fully standard compliant but it is not. It requires therefore an entry in drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h and re-compilation of the Kernel. I have tested it with Kernel 2.4.17. Later Kernels might already have the required entry as I submitted it to the maintainer of unusual_devs.h.
Compactflash Reader/Writer is a small half round device. There is no information about the manufacturer printed anywhere (It's a real no name device ;-). It has no cables. You plug it to the computer either directly or via expansion cable.
The device appears from Linux point of view like a SCSI disk. The listing in /proc/bus/usb/devices for this device is:
T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#= 2 Spd=12 MxCh= 0 D: Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=16 #Cfgs= 1 P: Vendor=0aec ProdID=5010 Rev= 1.00 S: Manufacturer=Card Reader/Writer S: Product=Card Reader/Writer S: SerialNumber=0AEC301000001A00 C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=100mA I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage E: Ad=01(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl= 0ms E: Ad=82(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl= 0ms
To unusual_devs.h you need to add the following lines:
UNUSUAL_DEV( 0x0aec, 0x5010, 0x0100, 0x0100, "Card Reader/Writer",
"neodio card reader/writer", US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_BULK,
NULL, US_FL_FIX_INQUIRY),
This device behaves very much like the Dimage 5 Camera listed below (it's a pseudo SCSI disk).
Please note that it is very important for Linux to have a correct filesystem on the card. Some cameras write some nonsence that Windoes ignores but Linux produces errors. If you format the card with my Dimage 5 then only the first 16Mb can be read. If you format the card with Windows and use it in the camera or this card reader then there is no such problem.
Keith Hudson wrote me that he bought a 64MB USB Pen Drive. It does not mention any manufacturer but contains also a Neodio 5010 chip. It works with the same settings as the Reader/Writer. A picture of the pen drive is shown below.
This is a "portable flashdrive" and it is one of the few implementations which follow the USB standard. That means you do not need a modified Kernel or a special driver for any operating system.
The pendrive (from http://www.pendrive.com) identifies itself as follows:
T: Bus=02 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 2 Spd=12 MxCh= 0 D: Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1 P: Vendor=0d7d ProdID=0120 Rev= 1.00 S: Manufacturer= S: Product=USB Disk Pro S: SerialNumber=072A101001A2 C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=100mA I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage E: Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=255ms E: Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=255ms E: Ad=83(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 2 Ivl= 1ms
You plug it in, you mount /dev/sda1 and you have access to your files on any Linux system (or other OS).
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/03/2214221&tid=126&tid=198&tid=4
> I'd take a backup of my backup
I'd say that's a bit out of date. Current parts are usually expected to get 1 million write cycles per block "minimum", and if you get good ones, you can approach 10 million. And provided that you don't rewrite every single piece of data every time, wear leveling will help you out too. So the parent is probably right. You would have to work really hard (or get a number of lousy chips) to kill a decent-sized drive with writes in a year.
documented on: Monday October 03, '05 by arodland (127775)
Yes, on all counts.
Modern flash is quite sophisticated (at least compactflash and USB sticks are, no idea about SD/MMC)
Not only does modern flash have multiple redundancies and ECC, it also has wear leveling and badblock reallocation. This is all completely transparent to the end user / operating system.
IOW, there is no need for the OS or filesystem to handle any of this.
And yes, the flash is larger than advertised for exactly these reasons. So are your hard drives (IDE, SCSI) which have similar features and have similarly reserved space.
by bani (467531)
Fujifilm. I just had one of those suckers go through the washing machine a while back. Still works.
by Fujisawa Sensei (207127)
I've had 4 of my 512 mb usb mem key's go through the wash dozens of times.. :-) no problems there at all :-)
documented on: Monday October 03, '05, marcushnk
Flash can survive being submersed just fine as long as you dry it out before using it. But the USB flash drives seem likely to get mechanically messed up because of the way they stick out. I didn't get to use mine that long before it got pried the wrong direction by accident and went "crunch," so now I just use CF and SD cards. Of course, if you don't use it a lot, only often enough to keep the documents up-to-date, maybe it won't be a problem.
Transflash or SmartMedia would be sturdier. But SmartMedia is obsolete and transflash is so small that it's very easy to lose.
You could just store the docs on your cellphone and plan not to lose it, or store on a memory card which is in your cell phone. But then the memory will get used more and be more subject to wearing out.
iButtons are about the sturdiest format there is, and they have encrypted ones too, but they don't have enough memory for much data. There are also flash-based smart cards you could keep in your wallet. But neither of those is common enough - it's hard to find a reader for them, harder than finding a usb port anyway. Smartcards _should_ be standard equipment for securely storing all your passwords and personal info, but it hasn't caught on, mostly because of paranoia about "big brother" or "mark of the beast" or identity theft or some such.
Maybe you could pop open an SD card, fill the empty space with epoxy and put it back together. It would probably be more durable that way. Or, do the same with a USB drive. Or use the SD card by itself most of the time, and keep a compact new USB SD reader in your knapsack.
Yeah somebody should be manufacturing a really tiny usb key that has encrypted flash, implements some smart-card-like protocols for partitioning information with different keys, and sticks out of the port less than 1 cm, and is very sturdy. Having it stick out less would reduce the leverage when it gets bumped against something.
ecloud
I deal with the write issue on a regular basis. We used to use flash for embedded systems but the annual replacement of flash drives got excessive. We now use microdrives, which have an actual spinning media drive in them.
If you're looking for a backup solution for your family data, organize your files in a competent manner (so it is comprehensive and well organized), and then develop a routine to write monthly CDs off.
by Anonymous on Monday October 03, '05
by PsychicX (866028) on Monday October 03
As far as encryption goes, for god's sake don't rely on anything the manufacturers ship. That stuff is meant to protect you from your average luser seeing files, not anybody who is honestly interested. Use Blowfish or Twofish for proper 2 way encryption.
> As far as encryption goes, for god's sake don't rely on anything the > manufacturers ship.
I agree. And don't rely on full disc encryption products. We are just starting to understand the security issues of full disc encryptions, it will be a few years before I'd expect manufacturers to start understand it as well and be able to implement something secure. For now GBDE is probably the most secure, but even that isn't perfect. gpg —symmetric —cipher AES256 would probably beat any full disc encryption when it comes to security.
> Use Blowfish or Twofish for proper 2 way encryption.
Uhm, what is a two way encryption? And I'd advice against blowfish as it only uses 64 bit cipher blocks. Go for something with at least 128 bit cipher blocks and even more if you have many GB of data. AES256 have 256 bit keys and 128 bit blocks, which I think should be sufficient as long as you don't need to encrypt more than 64GB of data in the key's lifetime.
That's why you should use the plausible deniability built into TrueCrypt. Giving the attacker the password to the outer volume (who has been robbed at knifepoint for a USB memory device? that'll be the day..), and they still still have no idea an entire volume of your real data is hiding in the noise that is the freespace of the aforementioned outer volume. the outer volume needs to be FAT and it can have innocuous stuff on there like fake financial documents.. Enjoy [sourceforge.net]!
tonyz2k
by Xibby
accessed from any platform and isn't Win32-specific as the vendor's software is.
For example: Zip up your stuff (or tar.bz2, whatever...) gpg -c --cipher-algo AES256 Stuff.zip
Copy Stuff.gpg to your flash media.
To decrypt, copy Stuff.gpg to your computer and run:
gpg -d Stuff.gpg > Stuff.zip
Don't forget your password. Make sure you use a trustworthy GPG binary, and the unencrypted archive should never be stored on your flash media!. The unencrypted version could be easily recovered using undelete software.
Now if it was me doing this, and I had some time on my hands, I'd look into the Linux crypto loop stuff. But that doesn't work all that well if nobody in your family runs Linux. So, I would have to opt for True Crypt [truecrypt.org] on a Windows machine, create an encrypted volume on my flash drive, copy over the improtant files, unmount and run for it. At my parents/grandparents/whatever, it would be trivial to download and intall true crypt again and get access to my files.
It's for Windows only, but I stumbled upon TrueCrypt found at http://www.truecrypt.org/ [truecrypt.org] and really like it. And it's not only useful for USB drives, but can be used to create encrypted logical drives on a Hard Drive. For the really paranoid, the documentation even covers lots of stealthy ways to use it so as not to be detected.
I'm certainly no expert at encryption, but it seems pretty solid. Basically, it creates an encrypted container file and then mounts it as a logical drive when you open the file through the app. I've seen commercial counterparts such as StealthDisk, and I think TrueCrypt's interface is easier to use and its execution is more solid.
It's OSS and free as in beer and as in speech.
