The Lion's Den

The not-so-great USB flash drive solution

Have you seen this drive?

Problem: You work for a mega-corporation where digital monitoring of employee activity is not only accepted, but also expected. You know your boss has been spying on you because he showed you a report of exactly what web sites you visited from work over a month long period broken down by category. He knows enough to read a URL breakdown but does not understand that multiple hits to an online radio station (launch.yahoo.com in this case) does not actually mean that you have been wasting time online while at work (instead it means that I listen to music you I work). Under a disaster-recovery plan you have been categorized as 'Mission Critical', which among other things means that your PC has to be backed up to a corporate server every night. You have a few personal files on the hard drive of your work PC, nothing risky or embarrassing but given the atmosphere still files you would rather not be read by your boss, get put into a corporate drive, or generally be available to other people. What do you do?

Solution: I bought a 256 MB USB flash drive. The solution seemed pretty near perfect to me, I moved all my files to the keychain drive and would pop it in my pocket whenever I left work. I could easily disconnect the drive when I stepped away from my computer and mount it on my home PC or home Mac with no problem. I had all my important word documents, excel files, lists, I even kept a couple of my favorite albums in MP3 format and would use it to ferry new music to and from work. The only problem was that the thick plastic device did not fit on my keychain and I did not have a connecting chain to attach it with. It was all quite great until last weekend.

I have a vague memory of wanting to take the drive out of my coat pocket so I would not loose it in Seattle over Thanksgiving weekend. I may have intentionally put it somewhere safe, but two weeks later I still have not found it and have no idea where 'somewhere safe' might be. It most likely dropped out of my pocket when I took my coat off at some restaurant or someone's house, if it is somewhere in my house I figure I would have run across it by now, but I have not. Oh sure, I have backups of all the files but the backups are at best four weeks old and some of the files were ones I updated weekly or even daily (such as a list of movies I watch and need to review for GeekRoar.com or a list of movies that look interesting and I would like to watch). I have not started working off the backups in hopes the original files would be found but instead have kept notes in my palm on what updates I need to make Today I feel defeated and think it's time to go back to the backups.

What to do about the original problem though? A floppy disk? Sure they damage easily and only hold 1MB of data, but on the other hand they are a full 3.5 inches wide and harder to misplace. I would like to read and write files to my file server at home, but I don't have a clean way to move the files back and forth (SMB file mounts are not possible across the firewall, I move some files via Z-Modem transfers over SSH but that is cumbersome). Heck, I may drop another $60 and try for the USB keychain solution again. only this time I will have to attach the little pocket device to something larger. like a rescue light that starts flashing if not moved in a day. Hmmm. wonder if anyone sells a device that broadcasts GPS coordinates.