On 11/15/2013 05:50 AM, Moritz Bartl wrote: > Hi, > > I know there is a dedicated mailinglist for TAILS, but I figured I would > reach a larger audience here, and it might be of interest to many who > are not subscribed to the TAILS list. > > Ideally, you use TAILS from a read-only medium. CD is best, but many > devices these days don't have an optical drive, and handling CDs is not > as convenient as a USB stick. > > For quite some time, people kept recommending the TrekStor CS USB stick > [ https://geizhals.de/trekstor-cs-8gb-50324-a240853.html ], one of the > few sticks available in Germany with write-protection switch. Turns out > they use a new firmware, and now don't support booting from it in > read-only mode. The company confirmed this via email. > > There are roughly no alternatives, and I figured I'm not the only one > looking for USB sticks with write protection switch. Via alibaba.com, a > "wholesale Chinese ebay", I contacted various Chinese suppliers, and > ended up ordering two samples. Even there, the selection of sticks with > write protection is very limited. > > I ended up paying paying 60€ for the 2 samples because of shipping and > Western Union fees. > > The sticks are not very fast, but acceptable, and boot in read-only > mode. They are not as slim as I hoped for, but the supplier is friendly, > production and shipping was very fast. (less than 2 weeks altogether).
Very cool! > Logo printing is cheap ($0.15 per stick), so to try the quality I also > had them print a logo on the samples. > > I am still undecided whether I want the final sticks to have a logo, or > simply be blank to not attract too much attention. If you have a nice > idea for a logo, let me know. I want to order 100 sticks in time for > Chaos Communication Congress 30C3. The production cost is $4 per stick > (8GB), the final price (taxes, GEMA, shipping) will likely be around $15. I've seen a Japanese USB stick in one end of a short fake cat tail. That would be cute, but would "attract too much attention". But still, very cute. > Pictures: http://share.pho.to/48Egt > > # dmesg > > [55679.884123] usb 2-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd > [55680.051089] usb 2-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, > idProduct=6387 > [55680.051092] usb 2-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, > SerialNumber=3 > [55680.051094] usb 2-1.2: Product: Mass Storage > [55680.051095] usb 2-1.2: Manufacturer: Generic > [55680.051096] usb 2-1.2: SerialNumber: B6BA8F3F > [55680.051459] scsi9 : usb-storage 2-1.2:1.0 > [55681.051827] scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic Flash Disk > 8.07 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 > [55681.053860] sd 9:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 > [55681.055544] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] 15937536 512-byte logical blocks: (8.16 > GB/7.59 GiB) > [55681.056665] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off > [55681.056676] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00 > [55681.057742] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: disabled, read cache: > enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA > [55681.176618] sdb: sdb1 > [55681.179808] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk > > # hdparm -t /dev/sdb > > /dev/sdb: > Timing buffered disk reads: 54 MB in 3.07 seconds = 17.60 MB/sec > > # dd if=tails-i386-0.21.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M > 891+1 records in > 891+1 records out > 934471680 bytes (934 MB) copied, 170.058 s, 5.5 MB/s > -- tor-talk mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
