What Were They Thinking?
Let’s face it, I’m a tech geek, and my job generates a bone-fide need for USB flash drives. Alas, I’m also a crypto, privacy, and security geek; in a few months, I’ll have been using Phil Zimmerman’s PGP for ten years. I’ve got encrypted flash drives, I’ve got flash drives protected with biometric fingerprint sensors…
As an aside, it’d be really, really great if a couple of the bigger manufacturers could get together and agree on some kind of standard for biometric drives. It’s phenomenally annoying that the ClipDrive doesn’t work with the Sony, nor the Lexar, nor the Sandisk… If they made all the hardware interoperable, there could be a chance that clever third-parties might make software to do really nifty things. Sony has come closest, giving their biometric drives PKCS#11 interoperability, but they’re the exception.
Anyway, I recently picked up a Lexar “JumpDrive TouchGuard”, a 256MB thumb drive with built-in fingerprint sensor, because they’re available cheap on a certain large online auction site. It’s a neat idea, and a neat product, but there are some shortcomings. I’m not going to enumerate the majority of my criticisms of it; if you happen to work for Lexar and want some feedback on what (not) to do if you ever make another biometric drive, get in touch. However, there is one design flaw on this thing that leapt out at me, and I realized it seems to be a common problem, to greater or lesser extents, with many of Lexar’s USB drives.
Here are a half-dozen USB devices you might find on my desk or in my pockets at any given moment. Starting from the bottom, there’s an old, battered 64MB ClipDrive Bio, one of the first biometric USB drives ever made. Above that is a silver 512MB Sandisk product of some sort, and a G&D Starkey, a very nice USB cryptographic token. The two blue devices are also hardware tokens; on the left is an old, very basic Authenex A-Key rebadged by Kensington, on the right is an “S-Key”, a security-thru-obscurity token that’s pretty well obsolete these days. The yellow drive is a pretty much indestructible 256MB Lexar Jumpdrive Sport, and above that is the 256MB JumpDrive TouchGuard.
Note where the slot for the keyring attachment is on the TouchGuard drive - the cap. What were they thinking? All that attaches it to the drive itself is basically a big rubber band. The JumpDrive Sport isn’t much better, with the attachment on the rubber cover.
All three of the hardware tokens have the attachment right on the body (admittedly, two don’t have caps), as does the ClipDrive and the SanDisk drive. Only Lexar seems to think that retaining the cap is more important than keeping track of the drive itself.
On closer examination, I have to admit I’m really impressed by the Sandisk drive; on this model, the keyring doesn’t just go thru plastic, it goes thru (twice!) the metal shroud of the drive itself. Put it thru the wash, drive over it with a car, drop it off a ladder - it’s going to stay attached to your keychain, unlike any of the others.
I know most people probably never consider physical construction when shopping for a flash drive, but I’m definately impressed with the Sandisk drive… and wondering just what Lexar were thinking.
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