How-To: Safeguard Vital Data on Your Thumb Drive
15 Jan 2007 |
Archiving and
Backups
Do you ever worry about losing your thumb drive (key
drive, flash drive)? Let's say one day you reach for
your thumb drive and it's not there. The thing is
gone. Panic sets in and you begin to race around
trying to remember what was on it. What have I lost?
This could be either an "Oh no, I'm ruined" moment,
or a "No big deal" moment. Read on to make sure it's
the latter.
The thumb drive is everywhere. Nearly everyone you
know has one. We love them, but they are small and
easy to misplace. Here are some things you can do to
protect yourself against loss, theft, or damage to
your thumb drive, and consequently, your data.
First the easy ones:
1) Write your name and phone number on it. There are still honest people in the world who will return lost property.
2) Keep it on the tether it came with. Wearing it is cooler than putting it in a pocket and finding it in the dryer later.
3) Put it away (eject or unmount) before you take it away. Many computers aren't done writing data until you eject a disk.
Now let's get serious:
4) Burn what you have on your thumb drive to CD/DVD once in a while.
Why bother? The thumb drive can be like your junk drawer; cluttered with who-knows-what with a bit of treasure mixed in. After a while you will lose track of what you have on the thumb drive. If you lose the thumb drive itself, you could be out something really important that you didn't even remember putting there, until it's too late. Finally, burning the data is cheap and a whole lot less effort than straightening up the junk drawer. Just burn it, write the date across it, and toss the disk...where? In the junk drawer of course.
5) Encrypt anything personal.
If you keep any credit card numbers, PayPal passwords, bank records, tax stuff, or other personal information on your thumb drive you should encrypt it. The last thing you need after losing your thumb drive is to find out later that someone invaded your privacy to either steal from you or to embarrass you somehow. Encrypting isn't that hard. Most thumb drives for PCs come with some kind of data "vault" software.
On the Mac encryption is a built-in feature. Many people don't even realize this. Here's how to use encryption on a Mac for free:
Creating An Encrypted Volume in Mac OS X:
-- Open "Disk Utility" (from the Applications | Utilities Folder)
-- From the Images Menu, select: New | Blank Image...
-- Choose a location for your volume (presumably your backup drive)
-- Give the Image a name, such as: "Encrypted Backups"
-- Set these other attributes:
Size: (Choose an appropriate maximum size to fit your drive)
Encryption: AES-128
Format: sparse disk image
-- Click Create. You will be prompted to create a password.
It is very important that you choose a password that you can remember. There is no known means of recovering data from an encrypted volume without a valid password. The Mac will offer to put the password in your keychain. But if you plan to take your data to another Mac you will need to remember your password.
The encrypted volume is like a disk within a disk. Anything you save to your encrypted volume will be safe and sound once you eject the volume. No one can get to your files without the password.
Combine this technique with inexpesive backup software like GrabBack for Mac OS X and pretty soon all of those ad hoc backups on your thumb drive will start to look pretty secure--and organized. More so than the junk drawer anyway.
First the easy ones:
1) Write your name and phone number on it. There are still honest people in the world who will return lost property.
2) Keep it on the tether it came with. Wearing it is cooler than putting it in a pocket and finding it in the dryer later.
3) Put it away (eject or unmount) before you take it away. Many computers aren't done writing data until you eject a disk.
Now let's get serious:
4) Burn what you have on your thumb drive to CD/DVD once in a while.
Why bother? The thumb drive can be like your junk drawer; cluttered with who-knows-what with a bit of treasure mixed in. After a while you will lose track of what you have on the thumb drive. If you lose the thumb drive itself, you could be out something really important that you didn't even remember putting there, until it's too late. Finally, burning the data is cheap and a whole lot less effort than straightening up the junk drawer. Just burn it, write the date across it, and toss the disk...where? In the junk drawer of course.
5) Encrypt anything personal.
If you keep any credit card numbers, PayPal passwords, bank records, tax stuff, or other personal information on your thumb drive you should encrypt it. The last thing you need after losing your thumb drive is to find out later that someone invaded your privacy to either steal from you or to embarrass you somehow. Encrypting isn't that hard. Most thumb drives for PCs come with some kind of data "vault" software.
On the Mac encryption is a built-in feature. Many people don't even realize this. Here's how to use encryption on a Mac for free:
Creating An Encrypted Volume in Mac OS X:
-- Open "Disk Utility" (from the Applications | Utilities Folder)
-- From the Images Menu, select: New | Blank Image...
-- Choose a location for your volume (presumably your backup drive)
-- Give the Image a name, such as: "Encrypted Backups"
-- Set these other attributes:
Size: (Choose an appropriate maximum size to fit your drive)
Encryption: AES-128
Format: sparse disk image
-- Click Create. You will be prompted to create a password.
It is very important that you choose a password that you can remember. There is no known means of recovering data from an encrypted volume without a valid password. The Mac will offer to put the password in your keychain. But if you plan to take your data to another Mac you will need to remember your password.
The encrypted volume is like a disk within a disk. Anything you save to your encrypted volume will be safe and sound once you eject the volume. No one can get to your files without the password.
Combine this technique with inexpesive backup software like GrabBack for Mac OS X and pretty soon all of those ad hoc backups on your thumb drive will start to look pretty secure--and organized. More so than the junk drawer anyway.