Help me find ideal Secure-portable drive

[IctusBrucks]

Hello,

I frequently work from home, and my job requires me to use a secure-style portable drive for transferring files when working at home. My work folder is around 150gb and every work day I have to "sync" the files which ends up updating anywhere from 5-50% of the data. I store all the data on the portable drive, including applications. Then I run the applications from the portable on both computers. This helps reduce sync errors. I previously had applications installed at both ends and used the portable to ferry files back-n-forth and copied them to the respective folders, but that turned out to be a very error prone set up.

My new setup is much less user-error-prone, but it has the side effect of putting A TON of wear on my portable drives. I've been using the Lenovo Thinkpad eSATA/USB drive for about a year, and in that time I have had 2 drives die on me. It's USB 2.0

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/itemdetail...6AC53CE9C2297A

And by "die" I mean they start giving me read errors when copying files, or just refusing to turn on anymore. Right now the one I am using works 99% but the occasional random file will not read so I know it's about dead.


So since this one is dead I need another. It would be great to also upgrade to USB 3.0 since I am reading and writing a LOT of data.

I would be tempted to go the SSD route... but something tells me if I am already losing a drive every 6 months, an SSD won't be much better for me.


So can anybody recommend to me a good secure portable drive in USB3/ESATA? Sadly one of the 2 computers is only USB2 and has no E-Sata, so whatever I choose needs to be backwards compatible.


I have thought about trying to use some file-merge software to go back to my old system to reduce drive wear. Basically keep the files at either end up to date manually, and use a file-diff program to merge changes when going back and forth. The only annoying workflow issue there is when transferring between work-home while I have files checked out using source control... I need to do some manual hoops to make that work, whereas using the portable for ALL work means there is only 1 client for source control and everything just works the same from either end.


Thanks to anybody who can suggest something

 

[smangular]

SSDs will not have a issue with hundreds of GB in Writes per day and will impress with you speed. Samsungs 830 or 840 Pro, or Intel SSDs would be fine. I would expect the SSD to also be significantly more reliable. Transportation typically kills portable HDDs.

Newegg has solid 2.5" USB3 External Enclosures about the $20-40 range.
example 1, SIIG: or example 2, startech, even with encryption but $73

Frankly hardware encrypted devices are really easy to screw up. Did the company hire an expert or firm to review its design? typically never. Even the idea of the touchpad on the top of the device has issues with looking at the oil from your hands and smudge patterns to reduce the number of permutations. Also using a numeric only password has issues with password entropy.

You are better off using quality security software including Symantec PGP or TrueCrypt.

Btw, how sensitive is the data you are protecting?

 

[IctusBrucks]

thanks for those links. I didn't know about the encrypted style enclosures, looks interesting.

how sensitive the data is might depend on who you ask, but it's really the company policy I am trying to follow. Says we need to use a secure drive to transfer files to and from work since we have had issues with people losing unencrypted drives and we are often targeted by hackers.

But I did just inquire directly to IT and while they encourage hardware encrypted devices, they apparently WILL let you use software instead. I guess I just haven't looked into it yet since I'm not sure how it would work in terms of workflow and my forgetfulness (ie, does the drive still get encrypted if I forget some process? the hardware makes it all automatic).