One alternative, and this applies not just to the Dell Mini 9, but to any netbook that accepts Secure Digital Cards (SD cards), is to purchase a large capacity SD card and use that as an extra hard drive.

This is a lot simpler than you’d think, and provides far more benefits than simply increasing the storage capacity on the device.

Boost your storage

How simple? You need only purchase the card, and then slot it into the card reader. If you’re using Windows XP, you’re done and if you are using Ubuntu, you’re done! In both cases the Operating System will recognise the card as extra storage and use can simply use it as such from then on.

If your netbook supports SDHC cards. like the Dell Mini 9, you can purchase an 8GB SD card to give the device a serious storage boost, alternatively you can purchase a microSD card of a similar capacity. Your netbook may not support microSD cards, but all our microSD cards include an SD adaptor, which means that they can be used as if they were an SD card, as well as being used as a microSD card.

Security

So you have your nice, shiny and new Dell Mini 9 and you take it everywhere with you, and do everything on it; which of course will soon have you wondering – what if! What if you lose it? What if you some miscreant steals it? What information will they be able to get hold of? Sadly, the answer is everything that you have on there, unless you encrypt it.

The next version of Windows, Windows 7, will apparently offer to encrypt your flash memory cards and USB drives for you when you first connect them; giving the option of a password and/or a keyfile. Fortunately, you won’t have to wait for Windows 7, there are free programs that can do similar things. Truecrypt is one of the easiest to use and most versatile.

Simply install the program and then insert your SD flash card. You then have two options; if you are only ever going to use the drive inside your Dell Mini 9, or similar netbook, you can wipe the disk and encrypt the whole disk; if you are likely to take the disk out and use it in other PCs that won’t have Truecrypt installed, you can create a traveller disk.

The former means that you can use the drive like any other hard drive, but with everything that is written to the drive being encrypted ‘on-the-fly’, the latter means that you can use the SD card on any PC and will simply need to enter the password to access the encrypted section of the drive.

The best option is probably the Traveller Disk (Tools > Traveller Disk Setup) option as that means that the disk is usable if it is taken out of your netbook, but whatever option you choose, Truecrypt guides you through it. Like Windows 7 you have a choice of using a keyfile or keyfiles and/or a password.

Unbreakable

A keyfile can either be created or any file used on your PC. A word of warning however, a keyfile is exactly that, a key to open the drive/file if you forget which file you used, or that file is lost or altered in any way, you won’t be able to gain access to your drive/files.

There is no way to crack this type of encryption, it is said that even with all the computing power in the world it would take years, if not centuries to crack a decent keyfile(s) or passwords. Make sure you backup your keyfile(s), just in case.

With Windows XP you have a further option once the SD card has been encrypted. When inserted the card appears under removable storage devices in My Computer. However you can mount it as a new hard drive by simply entering the password and opening with Truecrypt, you can then use it as you would any normal hard drive.

Follow that car

According to a recent survey, Black Cab passengers in London have left more than 60,000 devices ranging from mobile phones, MP3 players, USB memory sticks, and even laptops in cabs in the past six months.

Quite a shocking statistic, particularly as many of those devices carry personal information and it would be extremely easy for a identity thief to extract the information. But what can be done to guard against such losses when we are all forced to carry around a plethora of devices such as mobile phones, laptops and USB memory sticks and flash cards?

After each one of the data slip ups mentioned earlier, a word was bandied about quite frequently – encryption.

Ciphers

Encryption works by scrambling the information stored on a device so that it can only be decrypted using a specific password. These days encryption is so advanced that unless the thief/discoverer has a couple of supercomputers lying around their home, they aren’t going to be able to access your encrypted information.

Encryption isn’t just reserved for spies and military types there are plenty of free, military grade encryption utilities out there that are simple enough for anyone to use.

For those who use USB memory sticks or even SD memory cards or microSD memory cards, I would even go as far as saying encryption is a necessity.

Misplaced information

People often underestimate the dangers of carrying around USB memory sticks (also known as Pen Drives) and flash cards, as this expert points out:

“If it gets into the wrong hands of a criminal, hacker or opportunist, losing your mobile device can have serious implications, so our advice is always encrypt it and password protect it to stop it ever being accessed by anyone other than yourself.”
BBC News | Michael Callahan – Credant Technologies

One of the easiest ways of encrypting your information is to use a piece of software like TrueCrypt. This free and open source software allows you to encrypt an entire hard drive, USB memory sticks or flash cards.

Simply download and install the software, insert your USB flash memory stick or flash memory card and open the software. When presented with a choice of what drives to encrypt, just select your chosen USB memory stick or flash memory card and then the type of encryption, ranging from the standard US NSA quality encryption to even tougher encryption.

The software has a Traveller Mode, which, once set up, allows you to then use the device in another PC. It also works on-the-fly so you can use the USB stick or memory as normal, the software will encrypt/decrypt as necessary.

The software is amazingly easy to use, a step by step tutorial can be found here. All this of course begs the question, if it were that easy, why doesn’t (or didn’t) the Government use encryption?

Tip of the tongue

There are downsides to using encryption. With most applications if you forget the password you can simply click the ‘Forgot Password’ link or reset it. If you encrypt a USB memory drive or flash card and forget the password, well, then you have just lost all the information on that drive, permanently. There is no way to get the information back without the password.

It isn’t the end of the world though, you can also re-format the drive or delete the container, and start again, this time using a password that is memorable. Avoid using something that seems memorable at the time, but when needed you can’t for the life of you recall it.

This could be where a site such as Password Chart comes in handy, it allows the creation of completely random and seemingly meaningless passwords from memorable words. For instance using Horizon and Memory we are able to create the password – jD_6jD4c8@n^P

Apart from the inconvenience of losing access to your own information, and feeling like a bit of an idiot for forgetting your own password, there is another reason why you may not want to forget your encryption password.

The long arm of the law

Since 1st October 2007 it became an offence to fail to hand over encryption passwords to the police, if they request them. Being unable to remember the password is not classed as a plausible defence.

Of course the average person is unlikely to have their USB memory stick or Flash memory card confiscated by the police, but the two year prison sentence mean that it is worth bearing in mind.

Better safe…

Most people will probably assume that they do not need to use encryption, or even that it is too much hassle. But like using car alarms and house alarms, a minor inconvenience can quickly become part of an everyday routine.

Your information and privacy are extremely important, once they are out there in the hands of criminals and hackers, there is no way to get that information back again. The safest bet is to make sure that the information that falls into their hands is unusable, and the only way to do that is encryption.