Tiny capacious flash drives not only make it easy to carry gigs and gigs of data wherever you go, they also makes it easy to lose gigs and gigs of data. So if you’ve had more flash drives go MIA than you prefer to remember, Toshiba will now let you password-protect those lost files with a built-in PIN pad so you don’t have to worry about your data falling into the wrong hands.
That peace of mind comes with a few caveats, though. For starters, the drives are only USB 2.0 so patience is a must when copying large files, and the capacities top out at 32GB which is downright tiny by today’s standards. There’s also a handy Brute Force Hack Defence Mechanism which automatically erases all the data on the drive after ten failed PIN attempts, but that’s also just an annoying prank waiting to happen.
The new Toshiba encrypted drives are also expensive, ranging in price from $US95 for just a 4GB model, to $US200 for 32GB. But you’re not really paying for capacity here, you’re paying for the assurance that the next time your flash drive goes missing you’ll only be out a boatload of cash, not the sense of security that your private files are safe. [Toshiba via Ubergizmo]