[conspire] mystuff on external media

[Rich Bodo]

Syncing:

I pay to solve the syncing problem.  I just sync the whole thing
regularly via jungledisk, which also resides on the usb stick in an
application folder (it has all three os binaries mac/win/lin).
Jungledisk encrypts all files on the stick before sending them to S3.

I usually go with FAT32 as well.  Only because I want to access the
drives on any operating system.

Apps - Encryption:

If you decide to encrypt, encryption is fairly trivial and can
actually save you time.  On the stick I have a copy of two encryption
programs, truecrypt, and password gorilla - binaries for each common
os.  These are cross-platform enough to make it easy for me to get to
my data anywhere. I highly recommend them.  Password gorilla is set up
to copy passwords to the clipboard when I click on them in it's
interface, making it a simple double click and paste operation to
enter a password.

I have two corresponding small encrypted files, one password database
in psafe3 format (something of a standard), and one truecrypt
encrypted drive.  Either can be opened fairly quickly on any computer.

There is usually some data I don't encrypt on the stick.  That data
syncs to S3 as well.

Apps- Browsers:

I have experimented with portableapps.com, and with some portable
chrome broswers (srware.net iron chrome), and opera.  Firefox is the
only browser that I have ever had good luck with using portably.
Chrome portable browsers I have used are for whatever reason either
very slow or very buggy.  Windows is usually the problem platform, so
that might not affect you much.

Other interesting implementations:

There is this company ironkey.com that gives you a usb stick in a
metal case for 70 bucks (on up) that has a portable firefox
implementation, as well as a password database.  It's kind of an
interesting little business.

It seems much less secure to me than doing it myself.  The key has a
hardware encryption chip in it.  If someone fails to guess your
password 10 times, they erase your data.  They also keep your password
at ironkey, and you can recover it from them if you give them some
personal data, or something like that.

There is also a business version, that phones home and allows a
sysadmin to blow away your data or disable the key.

-Rich

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 4:55 PM,  <roger at rogerchrisman.com> wrote:
> I'm sure many of you have experience with this. Suggestions and tales welcome!
>
> I am experimenting with keeping a copy of my stuff (work in progress
> files, config notes, some images, some music and some reference files)
> on external media, in this case a USB thumb drive and or an SD card.
>
> Pros:
> - it's a backup of my work and current files
> - easy to take my files with me when I use different computers
>
> Cons:
> - if I lose my thumb drive who knows who might end up with my files
> - if it sticks out of the computer it might get whacked and broken
> - if I goof up my rsync invocation I could turn the disk(s) into a --toad
>
> My files aren't secrets and don't need to be encrypted. If thumb drive
> gets broken I can buy a new one. If toad, then reload from other
> computer or the other thumb drive.
>
> I'm experimenting with a USB thumb drive, and an SD card.
> - USB thumb drive is a 4Gig PNY metal swivel case USB thumb drive
> ($15.00 at Frys, thumb drive isle) that looks and feels sturdy and
> only sticks out 5/8th of an inch when I plug it in with its metal case
> swiveled 90 degrees instead of 180 degrees.
> - SD card is a 4Gig Kingston MicroSDHC flash card bundled with a USB
> adapter, an SDHC adapter and a MiniSDHC adapter ($21.00 at frys, other
> end of store in memory isle). I wanted to try this one because my
> laptop has a SC card reader slot in front that (a) has a transfer
> light that flashes when the SD card is being read or written and (b)
> caries the drive safely inside the computer with only 1/8th inch
> sticking out.
>
> rsync
> To sync files from the computer to the removable media:
> rsync -auv --del ~/mystuff /media/disk
>
> To sync the files from the removable media to the computer:
> rsync -auv --del /media/disk ~/mystuff
>
> Slow SD card reader
> For some reason the SD card reader in the front of my laptop is slow.
> Write speed to the MicroSDHC card in its SD card adapter there is
> ~270k/sec.
>
> Fast USB
> Write speed to the same MicroSDHC card but now in its USB adapter
> plugged into USB port in my laptop is *much faster*, ~9Mb/sec.
>
> Group permission not writable
> Both above removable media have their original FAT32 file system, with
> group permissions set to "root" user. I don't seem to be able to
> change their group permissions. This causes rsync to report inelegant
> errors when, per the -a flag, it tries to preserve my computer files'
> roger:roger permissions and fails to. Um, I gather FAT32 has no group
> permissions. What to do? I'd like to avoid routinely generating error
> messages of course.
>
> Anyone had success formatting flash media with a more UNIX oriented file system?
>
> What experiences have others had with this sort of thing?
>
> What command line invocations do you like for this kind of thing?
>
>
> Cheers,
> Roger
> Palo Alto
> (Laptop is an old, 2003, Compaq Presario X1000)
>
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>



-- 
-Rich

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