How safe is data stored on USB Flash Drives?
Posted by: Brad
Tags: computer, Computers, external laptop hard drive, hard drive, laptop, notebook, usb, usb flash drive
A lot of people these days carry a whole lot of mission critical data with them. When I think about all the files I have on my work computer, and how lost I would be without them, I shudder a bit at the thought of losing them. This is especially true given how many laptops get stolen these days. But it is also true because the hardware we use, such as our laptop hard drives can quite easily fail. So to be sure my data is safe I do a couple of things.
The first thing I do is I regularly back up. Small but important files go into a cloud backup service. There are plenty of these and they are either cheap or free. I use a combination of both depending on what data I am storing. My company also using cloud computing as a backup to our normal servers so we are more resistant to disruptions such as natural disasters. For bigger files I use an external laptop hard drive, in my case a small Western Digital passport, that fits in a pocket by can take as much data as my laptop’s normal hard drive. That way I have a complete backup every couple of weeks. I know I should do it more often but it is a bit of a pain remembering to do it all the time.
The other thing I do with smaller files, especially those that I am carrying between my desktop computer and laptop computer, is store them on a USB Flash Drive. This is mainly useful for times when I won’t be able to access the internet, such as when I am travelling (which I do a lot). The question I sometimes ask is how safe is all that data. I’m less worried about it being corrupted or lost because the number of save and rewrite cycles on flash drives is insanely high and they seldom go wrong. In fact, because they are solid-state devices, they are inherently more reliable than disk drives with moving parts. But the second question around safety is whether it can be stolen. I use a normal password lock on mine and don’t encrypt it. But I do know that if I had especially sensitive contractual information then I would lock down the flash drive with proper encryption software or I would buy a drive with hardware encryption. Some are so tough that if you get the password wrong 10 times they self destruct. It seems a bit James Bond for me, but there is clearly a need and a market out there for that kind of stuff.