Spreading the aloha of Macintosh, Hawaiian music and island culture from the sunset side of Haleakala volcano on the wonderful island of Maui

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Tuesday, February 15, 2005

USB Keychain Drives Eat Mac Files! Those neat little USB keychain things can trash your files As more and more of my friends get those nifty little keychain gadgets that plug into a keyboard and act as small, portable disk drives, It becomes even more important that they clearly understand the liabilities of these devices. Here's a link and short edit from a piece concerning this issue: Link "Understanding the Risks Associated with USB Memory Sticks" "Since their introduction the USB memory stick has been hailed by those fed up with the shortcomings of the floppy. Their small physical size, satisfactory speed and ever-increasing storage capacity makes them the most convenient device to use for transferring files from one place to another. However, these very features can introduce new security risks and amplify risks that already existed with floppy disks. The primary risks associated with USB memory sticks can be identified as: Virus Transmissions - Data sharing opens up an avenue for viruses to propagate Corruption of data - Corruption can occur if the drive is not unmounted cleanly Loss of data - All media is susceptible to data loss Loss of media - The device is physically small and can easily be misplaced Loss of confidentiality - Data on the lost physical media can be obtained by others" Now, here's my 128megs worth. USB drives are pitched as convenient transport devices to temporarily hold your digital files during transfer to another location. They mean to do this with a minimum of fuss and failure. Plug it in to your PC at work - drag your files to the icon, pull it out then vanish like a bad smell into the night. What your are not told is that every USB stick is formatted for use with Windows PCs - not Macs. While your documents will probably move back and forth wioth no problem, especially between the Mac and PC versions of the same program - such as Microsoft Office - every so often a karmic correction will occur and POOF! everything will vanish. The problem is that a computer sees USB flash drives as just another hard disk, and treats it as such, but hard drives aren't designed to be rudely unplugged, dragged across town and slammed into another computer without warning. That's just asking for trouble. So when you get home, and plug your flash-doobie into your nice iMac, you may discover that all your documents have been split in two pieces that can only be reassembled by an embarrassingly young child or a smirking nerd. There's even a reasonable chance that everything will just vanish for no reason. This is because while Mac OSX supports the Windows file format, it only does it with gloves on. When you have something important on your little flash drive, the gawds of MSfortune will find a way to erase it. It's the law! These are the same problems you could have with a ZIP disk or any other removable drive, but the manufacturers usually write code to eliminate such hassles. USB dongles are toys and as such don't get the support they should from developers. Very few people cite 'Automatic File Loss" as a feature they want a storage device. The trick is to reformat your USB device with Mac's Disk Utilities program, thereby turning it into a Mac drive. Once you do this the stick will no longer work with a PC, but neither will it make compost of your files. You can move stuff between Macs without a problem. Now for the poor schmucks who must transfer files between a Mac and PC, well, the issue gets a little complicated. Are you surprised? Leave the USB Stick formatted for a PC if you plan on moving files between PCs and Macs, but never leave the only copy of a file on the drive and don't leave it there for long expecting it to still be there later. Get it home and get it off. Moving between PC and Mac versions of Microsoft Office should work fine - it's when you move something like a Mac photograph document to a PC that things can fall apart. You're better off emailing the document to the other computer, at least then, there's no 'disk drive' involved to confuse things. 9:01:14 AM    comment []