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MiniDisc = More secure data (to some extent)

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Pug

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It has just dawned on me (yes I am a tad slow) that minidisc as a data storage medium is rather good. Why?

Because if I leave a minidisc lying around at work (or anywhere else really) nobody is likley to attempt to get data off of it due to:

a) Not know what the hell it is and leave it.

B ) Know that it is a minidisc and "minidisc is a bit like a cassette and has music on it" and leaves it alone.

c) Has read somewhere something about minidisc being able to store data (or seen the matrix) but not have any kind of hardware to access it, and leave it alone.

If I leave a CD(DVD)R lying around everybody in the office has access.

However out of interest is there anyway to password protect a minidisc.

Cheers

Pug

Edited by Pug
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As long as you don't expose it to extreme temperatures (like direct sunlight) or mechanically beak it, MD is a very durable medium, unlike (re)writable CD/DVD.

There are various ways to encrypt your data, for maximum protection try HardEncrypt:

http://www.softpedia.com/catList/95

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It's crucial how you encrypt your data, i imagine a password protection by winrar or similar rather easy to crack. Read about why the most convenient way is barely the most secure way here: http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/HardEncr...doc/sogood.html

The best thing with this encryption scheme is that you can use the recording capabilities of your MD to generate keys.

But i guess most people don't care about maximum security as long as it's convenient to use. :)

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Indeed the thread was meant very much tounge in cheek.

Although I don’t keep anything all that contentious on MD, I may have the odd spreadsheet, CV, photo’s from my mobile phone etc. that I don't want to share with the whole office. I find it quite nice that more or less I have exclusive access to these.

The flip side I suppose is that if I want to share any of this data it is slightly more difficult.

My biggest problem with storing stuff on MD (well with removable media in general) is that I’m rubbish at organising/labelling. The amount of times I have thought “wow I have over 50 blank MD’s that’s nearly 15 gig of storage for my entire photos etc.” started saving jpegs to MD but forgot to label the discs or file them and given up. However I’m great at organising folders on a HD.

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In one place I worked we had a machine that cracked passwords. When you renewed your password on the netwrok, the machine would try to crack it and if it did it in 24hrs you had to pick a new one. We had to use upper & lower case, special chars and numbers. It couldn't be a recognisable word or number sequence. It was eye opening just how fast this machine could crack a password.

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Hide your data on a Mac. No-one will be able to get it then because the only people that use them are people who don't like computers (except audio/video professionals) :P

Seriously though, if you have sensitive data, put it on removable media and use it on a standalone PC i.e. one that isn't connected to any sort of network.

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