Despite the rise of cloud-based storage, USB flash drives have been the go-to option for those who need local, pocketable access to important files for decades. These tiny drives are still sold nearly everywhere (including at chain drug stores, often at highly inflated prices), despite companies like Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox making online storage a convenient and often free (depending on capacity) alternative.

But because flash drives often work just fine for a decade or more, you could be hanging onto one that’s pitifully slow by today’s standards, and too cramped to hold all the data you need here in 2026. Capacities of up to 2 TB are an option with several recent flash drive models (and 1 TB is common), and the performance of the fastest flash drives approaches that of some of the best external SSDs.

We’ve tested dozens of recent flash drives, from leading brands and lesser-known alternatives, and listed the best USB flash drives below, to help narrow down your pocket-friendly storage search. That said, if fast performance is key to your workflow and you can deal with a device that's just a little bit bigger and requires a cable, one of the best external SSDs is usually a better buy.

Also, if you have a spare M.2 SSD from upgrading a laptop or desktop, you can save some money building your own external SSD by mounting an old drive in an enclosure.

 Best Flash Drives You Can Buy Today

Best Fast, Affordable Flash Drive

Just like its roomier 1TB variant, the 256GB Kingston DataTraveler Max is a speed demon in the flash drive world. At $30-$35, Kingston’s 256GB drive is a great balance of speed, affordability, and capacity for those who don’t want to spend much more on a roomier, somewhat faster alternative.

Available with either a USB-C or USB-A connector, the 256GB DataTraveler Max performed nearly as well as its more spacious 1TB sibling in our PCMark, DiskBench, and CrystalDiskMark tests, making it one of the fastest flash drives we’ve tested. And it’s also fairly slim, making it easy to slip into a pocket.

Just note that, if you’re a desktop user and you opt for the model with the USB-C port, you will likely have problems plugging the drive into rear USB-C ports on the motherboard. Thanks to the two-piece plastic slide mechanism that protects the drive’s port when not in use, the USB-C connector is slightly too short to plug into most motherboards successfully.

I tried this with three boards I have on hand and had the same issue with each. But, if your PC case has a front USB-C port or you’re using a laptop, this shouldn’t be an issue. I only had this problem with rear motherboard ports and this drive.

Those looking for similar performance and price without the USB-C connector issues should instead consider the 256GB TeamGroup X1 Max. It has a USB-C port on one end (that we didn't have problems connecting to a motherboard) and a USB-A port on the other. Its performance is also excellent, but the caps on either in don't fit that snugly and will be easy to lose.

Fastest Flash Drive

The line between flash drives and external SSDs is increasingly indistinct, and SK hynix's Tube T31 blurs it even more, by putting an actual M.2 drive on a small PCB and shoving it into a somewhat bulky but surprisingly speedy flash drive form factor.

Capacity is limited to just 512GB and 1TB models, but this is the fastest "SSD stick" we've tested yet, surpassing Transcend's ESD310C and Kingston's DataTraveler Max drives on most of our tests. Priced at $85-$90 when we wrote this, it's also slightly more affordable than those drives at the 1TB capacity.

If you're after a simple portable drive and don't need 20 Gbps speeds or a capacity higher than 1TB, it's a great choice. Its bulk might get in the way of nearby ports on a desktop or hub. But on a laptop, the USB-A port (if you still have one) is likely set apart from other USB ports. And on a desktop, you probably have several USB-A ports to choose from, unlike USB-C.

Read: SK hynix Tube T31 Review

Fastest USB-C Flash Drive

Much like the SK hynix Tube T31 drive (which is generally slightly faster in testing but also larger) Adata's SC750 blurs the line between flash drive and SSD, by essentially putting a retractable USB port on a small SSD inside a plastic housing, making for a compact flash drive that beats nearly every competing drive that doesn't require an external cable.

In our testing, the 10Gbps-rated Adata SC750 beat the Tube T31 in PCMark 10, came in second in reads in our 10GB DiskBench read test, and was faster than the hynix drive in writes. Adata's drive didn't look quite as good in our CrystalDiskMark results, but overall it's generally the second-fastest drive we've tested in this category.

And unlike the Tube T31, it uses USB-C rather than the older USB-A port. So if you want to plug your drive into a phone or you have a laptop with only USB-C ports, it should be at the top of your list for convenient and speedy external storage.

In terms of price, the ADATA SC750 may cost slihgtly more or slightly less than SK hynix's drive, depending on whether the latter is on sale. But given the similar performance and what generally seems to be about a $10 price difference between the two drives, if you're considering both drives, you should probably make your choice based on which port (USB-C for Adata, USB-C for SK hynix) is the most convenient for your use cases.

Read: Adata SC750 review

Best Cheap and Tiny Flash Drive

If you're after a drive that's small enough to leave plugged into your laptop most of the time, or you just want something you can clip to your keychain and forget about until you need it, Samsung's FIT Plus stands out. The 128GB model we tested sells for $18, and when we wrote this the top-capacity 256GB model was selling for just $25 direct from Samsung.

At less than an inch long, including its USB-A connector, it will stick out of your port less than an inch when plugged in. And it has a hole for a lanyard, it feels solid – in fact, this sub-$20 drive feels better than the most expensive drives on our list. And Samsung says it's rated to survive in up to 1 meter of water for 72 hours. In case it doesn't, the company covers the drive with a generous five-year warranty.

That being said, our testing shows this tiny drive is in a much lower performance class than the bigger, pricier, roomier models. On our real-world DiskBench 10GB test, the Samsung Fit Plus read our files at a decent 319.7 MB/s, but could only write at 58.4 MB/s.

That's just over half the read speed and less than 15% of the write speed of Kingston's 1TB DataTraveler Max. That said, the Samsung drive's performance was still significantly better than most of the drives we tested with capacities less than 1TB. SanDisk's Extreme Pro 128GB wrote our test files about twice as fast, but it costs nearly 2.5 times as much and is more than six times longer.

Best High Capacity Flash Drive

There are loads of insanely cheap no-name 2TB flash drives available on Amazon and sites like Aliexpress if you like throwing your money at scammy garbage tech – but the 2TB Buffalo SSD-PUT is real and (at $160 when we wrote this) a surprisingly good deal. It's cheaper than most larger 2TB external SSDs (although some of those will definitely be faster), and significantly smaller (although still bulky for a flash drive).

Overall, this drive did slightly better on our benchmarks than its 1TB sibling, meaning it doesn't beat or often quite match the Kingston DataTraveler Max. But for the price -- and especially considering it's one of a very few 2TB drives available from a known brand, this is a very impressive performer.

On the minus side, the drive has the same creaky, cheap-feeling plastic shell as the 1TB model, and it's nearly an inch wide, making it a tight fit on some laptops where the ports are placed close together. But you get a roomy 2TB of pocket-friendly storage at fast speeds (for a flash drive), and a bundled USB-C adapter should your device not have a USB-A port handy.

If Buffalo would just release this drive in solid-feeling metal housing (or even a solid-feeling plastic one), this would arguably be the perfect flash drive for those who need lots of storage in their pocket.

Flash Drive Shopping Considerations

How We Test Flash Drives

Our current testbed consists of an ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite motherboard and a Core i5-12600K CPU. This system gives us native Thunderbolt 4 ports and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 port via the front header (connected through Corsair's 5000D Airflow case).

All of our benchmark testing was done with drives plugged into the system's rear USB 3.1 Gen 2/ USB 3.2 (10 Gbps) ports. The Aorus board we used has one Type-C and one Type-A port rated for these speeds, so we were able to accommodate drives with both types of connectors.

To get a sense of how these flash drives compare to a larger (though still usually pocketable) external SSD, we also ran our flash drive tests on the Mushkin CarbonX, a 1TB External SSD that's rated to similar speeds as the fastest flash drives, or "Up to 1,000 MBps."

This drive is no longer widely available, but you can expect similar performance from some of the more affordable options on our Best External SSDs list.

Given external SSDs' general ability to perform better on longer-duration workloads (and particularly small file writes, which we'll see shortly in testing), an external SSD is often a better option if you are going to frequently be moving large amounts of files on and off your drive, and especially if you plan to run programs from your portable storage device.

The larger surface area and improved controllers and components of external SSDs tend to make them better at those kinds of tasks, though there are of course noticeable performance differences in that product category as well.

Trace Testing - PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test real-world file transfer performance with a custom 10GB dataset. We copy 1,204 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive.

Synthetic Testing CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.

A Note on Temperatures

If you've used a flash drive in the past and written lots of data on it, there's a good chance you've grabbed it to yank it out when you're done and winced at the hot – or at the very least surprisingly warm – exterior. We've certainly dealt with uncomfortably toasty drives before, but perhaps that's becoming an issue of the past.

We initially checked 10 of the drives we tested, and none felt hot to the touch after writing large amounts of data. We used an IR thermometer to check the temperature of several during a long 100GB write test.

After several minutes of sustained writing, the Transcend and PNY drives got the warmest, but were still under 94 degrees Fahrenheit. The solid-feeling metal-clad Orico drive got up to just 83.4 degrees, and the similarly solid OWC Envoy Pro Mini remained the coolest, at just 78.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The tiny Samsung Fit Plus, which barely has any surface area compared to the other drives, topped out at 82.1 degrees in our testing.

For future drives, we will only measure surface temperatures when a drive feels unusually warm during testing.

Other Flash Drives We Tested

Kingston Dual Portable SSD (1TB): This dual-port 10 Gbps drive from Kingston delivers convenience, versatility, and chart-topping synthetic and sequential read performance, outpacing our favorite USB-A-only SK hynix Tube T31 in some of our tests.

But it isn't quite the fastest when it comes to writes, and its small file performance was mixed, marking it as not the best choice for running programs or an operating system directly off the drive.

Still, the Kingston Dual drive makes a strong case as a fast and compact file mover, and is available in capacities up to 2TB, despite its slim metal shell. It's a worthy alternative to the Tube T31 if you're primarily using the drive to back up and carry files (and you need USB-C connectivity).

But it's also currently expensive, selling for north of $150 for the 1TB model we tested, while the SK hynix drive was available at Micro Center for about $50 less.

The Tube T31 is increasingly scarce, however, while Kingston's drive just recently launched. If the Dual Portable SSD goes on sale, it's a great option if, again, you don't care much about small file performance.

SanDisk Extreme Fit (1TB): This tiny USB-C drive is designed to be a semi-permanent attachment to the side of your laptop (or the back of your desktop), as an easy way to add storage space. Available in capacities ranging from 128GB to 1TB (the capacity we tested), it's not aiming to be a speed demon, with advertised read speeds of "up to 400 MB/s."

In our testing, it achieves that in our sequential CrystalDiskMark test (419.34 MB/s, to be exact), while delivering a decent real-world read speed of 318.3 MB/s in our 10GB file transfer test.

But write speeds are much lower (82.52 MB/s in the same 10GB test), and the small SanDisk drive's score of 274 on our PCMark 10 Data Drive test was less than a quarter that of the chart-topping Kingston drive. For its general purpose of semi-permanent storage, it's fast enough for general use without feeling sluggish (particularly when retrieving files).

But as small as it is, it doesn't sit flush with your USB port, making snags or bumps an obvious worry. And it's wide enough that it comes very close to blocking the adjacent USB-C port on my Asus laptop. So unless you're dealing with sensitive files or have spotty Wi-Fi, you may want to opt for cloud storage instead.

Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD (2TB): Despite being one of the best-looking and premium-feeling of the recent spate of so-called "stick SSDs," Seagate's flash drive-style drive just didn't stand out in benchmark testing, often lagging behind the SK hynix Tube T31 and TeamGroup's X1 Max, both of which cost less.

A price drop would make this drive more appealing, but it just wasn't as speedy in our tests as other high-end stick storage options.

PNY Pro Elite V3 (1TB): This third iteration of PNY's high-end flash drive has a solid metal sliding shell that protects its USB-A port when not in use. Its 1,000 MB/s read and 800 MB/s write speed rating, in particular, is a bit more modest than the claims of its high-end competition.

And while it exceeded those speeds in our sequential test, it disappointed elsewhere, like in PCMark, where it scored only half of some of the best alternatives we've tested.

It also couldn't crack the top five in our real-world read test (though its write speed there was nearly the best). So while the Pro Elite V3 is head and shoulders above the V1 and V2 that came before it, it doesn't stand out in terms of overall performance.

And at $105 for the 1TB model we tested, it's also one of the priciest 1TB drives we've tested. When we wrote this, the faster SK hynix Tube T31 was $86 at the same capacity, making it easily the better drive.

Silicon Power MS70 (1TB) and DS72 (1TB): These two drives from Silicon Power perform roughly the same and have similarly solid-feeling shells and flip-up caps. The DS72 has a USB-C connector on one and and USB-A on the other, while the MS70 makes do with just USB-A.

The Silicon Power drives also perform fairly well overall, but were inconsistent on our tests. In Crystal Diskmark's sequential tests, they were the best flash drives we've tested yet, and they were also among the best on our 10GB DiskBench test.

But on the PCMark 10 Data Drive benchmark, they consistently delivered scores that were roughly half of what the Transcend and Kingston drives we tested and they weren't particularly impressive in our 4K test, either.

Pricing for the 1TB models that we tested was also in an awkward middle area, between our favorite mainstream drive from Buffalo and the better-performing options from Transcend and Kingston.

Still, if the price drops by $10-$20, these would be good options, particularly if you mostly want a drive to move files from one place to another rather than to run programs directly. Their physical design and build quality feel better than some of the more expensive options out there.

Orico USSD-X (512GB): Orico's latest flash drive is wrapped completely in metal, and feels surprisingly solid in your hand. And supposedly it will be offered in several colors. Its performance in our testing hovered between middle of the pack and near the top, excelling in our PCMark and Diskbench tests, especially.

That said, its performance didn't stand above the rest in any single test, and at the time of testing, we couldn't find it for sale in the US. Hopefully, the company improves its supply issues, because this USB-A drive feels better to hold and use than arguably any other flash drive we've tested. And its performance is quite solid. We just need to know how much it will cost.

OWC Envoy Pro Mini (1TB): This drive was the second-fastest overall and sports a solid metal shell. But its design is overly complicated, as is its setup process (which forces you to agree to a EULA which, when we wrote this, was still 404ing). Really though, the primary problem with OWC's drive is price. At $149 for the most spacious 1TB model, it's nearly as expensive as the 2TB Buffalo drive. And often the Buffalo drive goes on sale for less.

Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime (1TB): With a name this obnoxiously aggressive (and $90 price to match), we were expecting impressive things from Patriot's top-end flash drive. And it did quite well in some tests, but struggled on our 10GB file transfer test, managing to write at just 91.7 MB/s–behind all but the lower-capacity, much lower-priced drives on this list.

PNY Pro Elite (1TB): We like the solid metal shell of this PNY drive, but its $130 asking price is higher than any other 1TB drive we've tested. And it struggled on our 10GB write test, managing just 96.9 MB/s, which was slower than even Samsung's 256GB Duo Plus drive. There isn't much that's pro or elite about that.

Orico UFSD-C (1TB): This metal-clad USB-C drive looks and feels great and performed quite well overall, though its benchmark results didn't stand out in any real way. Its main issue is availability. The company sent us the 1TB model we asked for, but it doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere in the US.

You can order it on Aliexpress, but even there it's only available at up to 512GB, and its $82 current price is close to what we'd expect the 1TB model to sell for.

Samsung USB-Type-C (‎128GB): One of Samsung's newer drives, this model sports solely a USB-C connector and isn't much bigger than the USB-A Fit Plus drive. But it's slightly more expensive than the Fit drive and had a tendency to land near the bottom of our tested Samsung drives in terms of performance.

If you need USB-C and don't need a lot of speed (and particularly write speed) and capacity (it tops out at 256GB), this isn't a bad drive. It just doesn't stand out in any substantive way. And we wish its write speed were at least twice as fast as the 59-67 MB/s we saw in our sequential tests. Read speeds were, at least, much faster at more than 300 MB/s.

SanDisk Extreme Pro (128GB): While SanDisk's high-end drive performed well compared to other 128GB models, its $43 price at that capacity is about 2.5x that of Samsung's Fit Plus. And while it is available in up to 1TB capacities, the most spacious model sells for between $130 and $200, making it much more expensive than competing drives.

SanDisk Ultra (256GB): SanDisk's plastic-clad Ultra drive is exactly the kind of thing you'll see drastically overpriced at your local pharmacy or big-box store. Online, it seems fairly reasonable at about $20. But Samsung's Fit Plus is much smaller, performed better in most of our tests, and can be found for $5-10 more in the 256GB capacity.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Dropbox, the cloud storage provider, has announced it has been the target of a phishing attack that successfully accessed its private GitHub repos. GitHub was able to quickly notify Dropbox of the attack, and no customer data or passwords were affected.

The data breach took place on October 13, with Dropbox becoming aware that things were amiss the next day. The attackers impersonated the CircleCI integration and delivery platform that can be logged into using GitHub credentials, bombarding Dropbox staff with realistic-looking phishing emails. Many of them were blocked by Dropbox’s internal systems, but some got through - enough, it seems, for at least one employee to visit a fake CircleCI login page, enter their GitHub credentials, and use a hardware authentication key to pass a one-time password to the malicious site.

This allowed the attacker into Dropbox’s private Github area, from where they copied 130 code repositories. Data accessed includes, according to Dropbox’s statement: “...some credentials—primarily, API keys—used by Dropbox developers. [It] also included a few thousand names and email addresses belonging to Dropbox employees, current and past customers, sales leads, and vendors.”  Then later: “These repositories included our own copies of third-party libraries slightly modified for use by Dropbox, internal prototypes, and some tools and configuration files used by the security team. Importantly, they did not include code for our core apps or infrastructure. Access to those repositories is even more limited and strictly controlled.” 

Back in September, GitHub warned its users in a blog post about attacks targeted at CircleCI, noting that “If the threat actor successfully steals GitHub user account credentials, they may quickly create GitHub personal access tokens (PATs), authorize OAuth applications, or add SSH keys to the account in order to preserve access in the event that the user changes their password.”

Dropbox was able to cut off the attackers’ access on the same day it found out about the intrusion, and believes the risk to customers is minimal. The company is also upgrading its multi-factor authentication method to WebAuthn—a change already in progress when the attack happened. 

If you're a current Amazon Drive customer, you might want to think about offloading your files from the cloud service sooner rather than later. Amazon just sent out an email informing customers that the service will be discontinued on December 31, 2023, giving you just over a year to get your affairs in order.

"Over the last 11 years, Amazon Drive has served as a secure cloud storage service for Amazon customers to back up their files," said Amazon in the email sent to current Amazon Drive customers. "On December 31, 2023, we will no longer support Amazon Drive to more fully focus our efforts on photos and video storage with Amazon Photos."

For those unfamiliar with Amazon Drive, it enables every Amazon customer to upload 5GB of files for free. In the case of Amazon Drive, customers can securely store photos, videos, and documents in the cloud. PC and Mac users can upload and download files to Amazon Drive using a web browser, while Android and iOS users can interface with the service using an app.

While 5GB of storage is provided for free, Amazon offers paid tiers starting at $1.99/month for 100GB on up to $11.99/month for 2TB of Amazon Drive storage. 

"We will continue to provide customers the ability to safely back up, share, and organize photos and videos with Amazon Photos," Amazon continued in its email. Amazon Photos is similar in concept to Amazon Drive, except that it only allows customers to upload photos and video. 

One perk of Amazon Photos is that customers with a Prime membership can access unlimited photo storage. On the other hand, Prime members are limited to just 5GB of free video storage. If you want to increase your Amazon Photos video storage with a Prime membership, additional storage starts at $1.99/month for 100GB.

With the impending demise of Amazon Drive, it's probably a good time to look at alternative cloud storage solutions for your documents like Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, or iCloud Drive (if you're an Apple user).

LogMeOnce is proud to be a password-less system: It’s the first password manager I’ve tested that allows you to sign in with just a selfie of your face. You can also use fingerprint readers, your phone’s biometrics, and/or a pin code. And, of course, a strong password — if you’re feeling old-fashioned.

LogMeOnce claims to have 57 “unrivaled top features,” and it does have a lot of features you won’t find in competitors -- even some of the best password managers - such as scheduled logins, remote logins, and the ability to encrypt cloud storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. But there are two different tiers of paid service, and some features you see in other full service password managers — such as dark web monitoring — are an add-on that you’ll have to purchase separately. 

LogMeOnce may have too many features for it to be beginner-friendly. The service is confusing, the dashboard is cluttered, and the whole thing is just not very intuitive to use. I had to start poking random menus to find a place to add my phone — it never asked if I wanted to add my mobile device during setup. There’s a page full of training videos and support documents with broken links, which makes me wonder if LogMeOnce is overwhelming the developers as well. 

(If you do need directions on how to use LogMeOnce (and you will) you can visit the support page located separately from your secure account.) 

Specifications: LogMeOnce

Price and Coverage with LogMeOnce

LogMeOnce has four plans: Premium, Professional, Ultimate, and Family.

Premium is the free level for one user. There’s no limit to the number of passwords you can save or the number of devices you can sync those passwords across. You get 1MB of encrypted storage, and can store three credit cards and up to three secure notes. This plan includes basic two-factor authentication (2FA) via email or Google Authenticator. You also get access to a secure password generator. 

Premium is ad-supported — something I haven’t seen in other free password managers.

Professional costs $30 per year and does everything the Premium plan does. It also allows you to store more secure notes (up to 50) and unlimited credit cards, and gives you 1GB of secure cloud storage. You get access to more options for 2FA (SMS, phone call, other authenticator apps) and this plan also includes advanced auditing features. 

Ultimate costs $39 per year and includes everything from the Professional plan, plus even more ways to handle 2FA as well as multi-factor authentication, unlimited secure notes, 10GB of file storage, anti-theft services, a customizable dashboard, and “tons” of other features. 

Family costs $59.88 per year and covers six members. The Family plan includes everything in the Ultimate plan, plus a family manager dashboard.

Signing up with LogMeOnce

There’s a dizzying array of options on the LogMeOnce sales page, but all the “try me – it’s free” buttons lead to a single sign-up page.

It asks for your first name, email address, and a Master Password. You’re also asked to create a security question for password recovery.

After signing up, I was presented with four plan options from free to family. The Ultimate Edition came with a 7-day free trial without a credit card, so I decided to go for maximum protection. 

It immediately launched into a slideshow tutorial, pointing out all its cool features. Then I was presented with an onboarding checklist: create account (done!), install Chrome Extension, Import Passwords. There’s no desktop version for offline access.

The onboarding was pretty smooth, and LogMeOnce walked me through all the steps with detailed instructions.

Using LogMeOnce on Desktop

LogMeOnce is a bit graphically intense. Every time I opened my vault…it literally opened the vault with a spinning safe door.

The dashboard for LogMeOnce started judging me right away. On the left were eight icons for features I could delve into, such as the Password Manager, wallet, scorecard, notes, and Dark Web Monitoring. On the right was my Identity Risk Scorecard with an F in the middle of a pie chart with all my bad password infractions. Later I discovered the right-hand column switches between the ID Risk Scorecard and a Daily Journal full of password fails and successes.

Password strength, shown on a temperature gauge, was a woeful 53%. However, LogMeOnce gave me a couple tips on how to start fixing things.

Clicking the Password Manager took me to a page full of thumbnails for all the locations I had a saved password. Clicking an icon took me to the site, while clicking the three dots opened an editing window. Here I could change the name of the location, put it in a group, and see how weak the password was – and change it.

Dark Web Monitoring

Dark Web Monitoring is on the dashboard, but it's an additional charge. You can enter your email for LogMeOnce to check, and it will tease you with how many data breaches it found…and ask you to pay for the extra service. However, I had already examined and cleared all the security breaches with Nordpass while I was testing that system and wasn’t too concerned.

Using LogMeOnce on Mobile

It took a while to find out how to add a mobile device to LogMeOnce. It’s not an option anywhere inside the desktop program, and clicking “device manager” on the secondary toolbar only gave me an option to add an external security key for 2FA. To find out how to install the app on my phone, I had to Google it. 

To get LogMeOnce on your mobile device, download the app from the app store. Sign in with your email. Open the email on your computer, click the “account recovery” button and LogMeOnce will let you proceed. Answer your security question. Enter your phone’s passcode. Confirm the pin. Then give the app permission to use fingerprint ID so you don’t have to type all that again.

Note: When I re-read the installation directions, I discovered it was asking for a NEW pin for LogMeOnce, not my phone’s pin. Oh well. Also, if you have a phone that can do Face ID, it will ask if you’d like to use it during this setup period.

Now you have a miniature version of LogMeOnce on your phone. It has all the same features, plus an option for secure browsing. There’s no explanation for what this is, so I took it at face value.

Set up missed one critical step, and that’s letting LogMeOnce autofill my passwords, something you’ll need to turn on if you plan on using the internet from your device. Go to your phone’s settings, scroll down to Passwords, click AutoFill Passwords, and click the slider to let LogMeOnce handle passwords. Make sure you deactivate your phone’s native AutoFill too.

I tested LogMeOnce on my Twitter password. No icon popped up to let me know if LogMeOnce was on the case, only the normal keychain over the keyboard. I clicked it and LogMeOnce took over. It asked for a pin or a fingerprint for one touch access. This offered a list of possible Twitter accounts (I have three, after all) and I picked the right one and was able to log in.

Shopping with LogMeOnce

LogMeOnce allows you to store three credit cards on the free plan and even more at paid levels. When I entered my credit card information it advised that I not enter my CVC code – but it lets you ignore this advice if you’re feeling dangerous.

Shopping on the desktop worked perfectly. When it sees a form to fill out, an orange LogMeOnce icon is displayed in the text box. Clicking that will pull information from your profile or stored credit card information.

On mobile LogMeOnce wasn’t always able to see forms to fill out, especially on small business websites. It was however able to figure out where to put my credit card info and fill out forms on Amazon.

LogMeOnce Password Generator

The password generator creates super strong random passwords using upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. When you create a password, a small line underneath will reveal the strength by saying how much time – from hours to quintillion years – it will take to crack.

When you want to change a password, you’ll need to log into both LogMeOnce and the site you’re updating. Find the page where you can change your password (usually in the settings). Now open LogMeOnce, open the password manager and click the three dots to edit the item. A calculator icon next to the text box will pull up the password generator. Click to copy it and save it on both sites.

The password manager is also a stand-alone feature on the mobile version, which allows you to create and then copy a new password into any website.

How Secure is LogMeOnce?

LogMeOnce has an array of powerful security features, including AES-256 bit encryption compliant with NIST guidelines. Your data is encrypted between the device in your hands to the server. All plans include 2FA and paid plans include multi-factor authentication.

Bottom Line

LogMeOnce is overly complex for the average user, loaded down with unnecessary graphics and honestly, a bit more judgy than other password managers I’ve tried out.

The free plan offers most of the features you expect in a password manager – but at the cost of putting ads on your computer. The paid plans offer tons of services, which will appeal to more advanced users looking for a very thorough password manager. For regular users, however, LogMeOnce is complicated, overwhelming, and less intuitive than other password managers I’ve tried.

LogMeOnce is highly secure and full of options, but if you just need a regular set of features on something that's easier to use, we recommend checking out LastPass or one of the other products on our list of best password managers.

Home security camera systems have exploded in popularity while decreasing in price over the past few years. For example, you could purchase a Ring Indoor Security Camera for around $60, but there are some drawbacks: first, vendors like Ring often charge a monthly fee to store your data and second, you might not want video and photos from inside your home being shared with a third party (in Ring’s case, Amazon) where strangers could potentially see them. 

MotionEyeOS, a free open-source application, allows you to turn a Raspberry Pi with a camera into a home video monitoring system, where the photos and videos can either stay on your device (and home network) or, if you choose, be uploaded automatically to a cloud-storage service such as Google Drive or Dropbox. 

In this tutorial, we will show you how to set up a Raspberry Pi security camera with MotionEyeOS. This software works with almost any Raspberry Pi (connected to the internet) and almost any webcam or Pi camera. There’s no fancy coding to be done in this project; it just works.

Here are a few of the cameras I’ve successfully used with MotionEye.

This Raspberry Pi security camera can be used to record porch pirates, monitor children or pets or to watch out for burglars. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided with the intent for personal use. We expect our users to fully disclose and notify when they collect, use, and/or share data. We expect our users to fully comply with all national, state, and municipal laws applicable. 

What You’ll Need

• Raspberry Pi 4 or Raspberry Pi 3B+, or Raspberry Pi Zero W
• 8 GB (or larger) microSD card
• Raspberry Pi Cam, HQ Camera, Infrared Camera, or webcam
• Monitor/Power supply/Monitor/HDMI Cable (for your Raspberry Pi)
• Your Windows or Mac computer.

Install MotionEyeOS

In this section, we will download MotionEyeOS, flash to a microSD card for our Raspberry Pi security camera, and set our WPA credentials. 

1. Download the latest version of MotionEyeOS corresponding to the specific model of Raspberry Pi you are using from https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/releases  

2. Insert your microSD card into your computer to be read as a storage device. 

3. Launch Raspberry Pi Imager. You can download the imager here if you don’t already have it installed on your computer. 

4. Select “Use custom” for the Operating System. 

5. Select the motioneyeos version that you just downloaded. This should be a .img.xz file. 

6. Select your microSD card under “SD Card.” Note that all data on your microSD card will be erased in the next step. 

7. Click “Write” in the Raspberry Pi imager. The ‘write’ process could take 1 to 2 minutes. 

8. When the process completes, physically remove and then reinsert your microSD card. We do this because the software automatically ejects the microSD card when the process completes, but we need to add one file before the next step. 

9. Create a new file named wpa_supplicant.conf with the following text, replacing “YOUR_NETWORK_NAME” and “YOUR_NETWORK_PASSWORD” with your information. A source code editor such as Atom works great for this purpose. WordPad and Notepad are not recommended to create this file as extra characters are added in the formatting process. 

country=usupdate_config=1ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicantnetwork={ scan_ssid=1 ssid="YOUR_NETWORK_NAME" psk="YOUR_NETWORK_PASSWORD"}

10. Save wpa_supplicant.conf to your microSD card. Eject your microSD card.

11. Insert your microSD card into your Raspberry Pi. 

12. Connect your camera, monitor and power supply to your Raspberry Pi. Power up your Pi. 

13. Find your internal IP address on the Pi screen. In most cases your internal IP address will start with 192.168.x.x or 10.0.0.x. Alternatively, if you do not have access to a monitor, you can download Angry IP Scanner and find your IP address for your Motioneye Raspberry Pi. Look for “MEYE” to identify your MotionEye Pi.  

14. Enter your internal IP address into a browser window of your Windows or Mac computer. Alternatively, you could use a Chromebook or a tablet. At this point your Motioneye should start streaming. 

In most cases, the system will automatically stream from the attached camera. If no image comes up, the camera may be incompatible with the Raspberry Pi. For example, an HD webcam may be incompatible with the Raspberry Pi Zero, but will work with a Raspberry Pi 3. There may be some trial and error in this step. Interestingly, most older webcams (manufactured before the Pi) will work with Motioneye. Here’s an old Logitech Pro 9000 connected to a Pi Zero W with a 3D printed stand. 

Configuring MotionEye for Raspberry Pi Security Camera 

In this section, we will perform a basic configuration of Motioneye and view our Raspberry Pi security camera video stream. 

1. Click on the Profile icon near the top left within your browser menu to pull up the Login screen. 

2. Log in using the default credentials. The username is admin, and the password field should be blank. 

3. Select your Time Zone from the dropdown menu in “Time Zone.” Click Apply. Motioneye will reboot which will take a few minutes. This step is important as each photo and video is timestamped.  

4. Motioneye detects motion when _% of frames change. The intent is to set your % low enough to pick up the movement you are tracking, but high enough to avoid recording a passing cloud. In most cases, this is achieved through trial and error. Start with your default 4% Frame Change Threshold and then move up until you reach your optimal setting. 

5. Click the down arrow to the right of “Still Images” to reveal the corresponding settings. Do the same for “Movies.” Set Capture Mode and Recording Mode to “Motion Triggered” and length of time to “Preserve Pictures” and “Movies.”

I have chosen “For One Week” since I’m only working with an 8GB microSD card. The photos saved locally will serve as a backup. You’ll save all of the photos to Google in a later step. Click Apply to save your changes. 

6. Set your Camera Name, Video Resolution, Frame Rate and other options in the “Video Device” section. Click Apply to save your changes.  

Viewing Raspberry Pi Security Camera Images / Video Locally 

If you don’t wish to upload images to a third-party service such as Google Drive, you can view the images and/or videos) captured locally on your Raspberry Pi security camera. If you choose this method, the images will never leave your local network.

1. Click on the live camera feed and new icons will appear. 

2. Click on the image icon to view images. 

3. Or Click on the “Play”button icon to view movies. 

Automatic Uploading to Google Drive (Optional) 

In this step, we will configure our Raspberry Pi security camera to automatically upload all of the photos (and videos) taken to Google Drive. This method (with a couple of nuances) also works with Dropbox. Of course, you have to be comfortable with having your images in the cloud. 

Most users create a separate Gmail account specifically for this purpose, to maximize free storage space from Google. Additionally, this will come in handy if you decide to enable email notifications in the next step.

1. Click the down arrow corresponding to “File Storage” in the main admin menu. 

2. Toggle “Upload Media Files” to ON. This should automatically toggle “Upload Pictures” and “Upload Movies” to ON, but if not, hit ON. 

3. Select Google Drive from the “Upload Service” dropdown menu.  

4. In your Google Drive, create a new folder for storing your photos and videos. I chose “PorchCam” for the name of my folder.

5. Enter “/” followed by your folder name for ‘Location.’

6.  Click “Obtain Key” and accept associated permissions by clicking “Allow.”  

7. Copy and paste the authorization code into your “Authorization Key” in Motioneye.

8. Click the “Test Service” button. If you don’t get an error message in Motioneye, then it was a success.

9. Go to your Google Drive folder and test your setup by pointing the camera at yourself and waving to the camera.  

Configuring Automated Email Notifications (Optional)

In this optional step, we will configure our MotionEye to automatically send us emails with attachments containing the photos our Raspberry Pi security camera has taken. It is highly recommended that you create a separate Gmail account specifically for this purpose. These instructions are specific to Gmail only. 

1. Enable “Less Secure Apps” in your Gmail account. 

2. Expand “Motion Notifications” in Motioneye.

3. Toggle ON “Send An Email”

4. Enter your Email address, password. 

SMTP Server = smtp.gmail.com

SMTP Port = 587

Use TLS - Toggle to On

Enter a value for “Attached Pictures Time Span”

5. Click the “Test Email” button. 

The first email is a text only email. Subsequent emails will contain attachments.  

Mobile App Access to Raspberry Pi Security Camera 

MotionEye also features a mobile app for iOS and Android / Google Play stores. Keep in mind that the app will only work while you are on the same network as your Raspberry Pi (unless you enable port forwarding, which is not encouraged for security reasons).

MotionEye iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/motioneyeos-client/id1485489242 

Google Play app - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jairaj.janglegmail.motioneye&hl=en_US&gl=US 

If you’re on the hunt for a new external hard drive, WD’s My Passport is a well-rounded choice. With a solid track record, password protection, and capacities of up to 5TB, it’s prepared to store a lot -- if not all -- of your data and keep it safe.

WD’s My Passport is a popular seller and for good reason. It’s priced competitively and offers up a pretty good value if you are looking for a lot of portable storage on the cheap compared to SSDs. These portable hard disk drives (HDDs) aren’t the flashiest or fastest of storage devices, but having had quite a few pass through my hands over the years for various backup or data migration purposes, they always get the job done.

Specifications

The new My Passport has been slimmed down a bit compared to its predecessors, but packs some decent density. WD’s My Passport comes in capacities of 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB. All are backed by a 3-year limited warranty and priced to move. Our 5TB review unit sold for $127 on Amazon and Newegg when we wrote this. The company doesn’t provide performance ratings on these portable HDDs, but performance can hit upwards of 120-140 MBps, depending on the capacity.

Out of the box, the drive comes formatted as NTFS for use in Windows. There is a Mac model that comes preformatted for Macs, too. Plus, WD’s My Passport comes secured with AES 256-bit hardware encryption to keep your data from slipping into the wrong hands if it ever leaves yours.

On the go, WD’s My Passport is rated to operate in temperatures of 5-35 degrees Celsius (41-95 degrees Fahrenheit). And unlike SSDs, it isn’t rated to well for shocks. The company even warns end-users to not drop or jolt the drive, nor move the drive during any activity.

That, aside from slower speeds, is the main downside of opting for a hard drive over an SSD. If you drop it, particularly while it’s running, and the read/write head doesn’t have a chance to safely park first, you could damage the drive and lose your data. So be extra careful with your backup drive if it’s an HDD rather than an SSD.

Software and Accessories

WD’s My Passport comes with an 18-inch USB A to Micro USB B cable, which is about the perfect length -- not too short, nor too long. Additionally, the company provides users with WD Discovery software, which enables you to manage almost everything about your drive.

With WD Discovery, you can enable the My Passport’s AES 256-bit hardware encryption-based password protection via WD security software. The software also provides download links for WD’s Drive Utilities to configure and check up on your drive’s health, as well as WD’s Backup software. The backup software lets you quickly and conveniently schedule automatic backups. WD Discovery software even lets you backup media from social media and cloud services like Facebook, Dropbox, and Google Drive.

A Closer Look

Encased within its plastic enclosure, WD opted to utilize a Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR, a technology that overlaps data tracks to increase density)-based 2.5” HDD, model: WD50NDZW-11MR8S1 on our 5TB sample. It comes with a 128MB DRAM cache and has the USB bridge and connector built-in rather than using a standard SATA connection. Of course, it is a SED or self-encrypting drive, as it comes with AES 256-bit hardware encryption.

WD’s My Passport comes in two sizes depending on the capacity you get. The 1TB and 2TB models measure 4.22 x 2.95 x 0.44 inches and weigh 120 grams (4.2 ounces). Due to the increased number of platters that WD’s My Passport needs to reach 4TB and 5TB, the larger capacities are bit bulkier. Rather than your standard 7mm SSD or 9.5mm HDD, the HDD in this models measures 15mm thick, which also adds to the weight. The 4TB and 5TB models measure in at 4.22 x 2.95 x 0.75 inches and 210g/7.4 ounces.

Along with a redesign to slim down a bit, the My Passport is also available in three colors: black, red, and blue. It features a small white power indicator light that only appears visible when the device is powered on.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

Today, we compare WD’s My Passport to a 2TB LaCie Mobile Drive based on Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) technology, as well as a bunch of speedy external SSDs we have tested. As the fastest of the bunch, Samsung’s X5 boasts Thunderbolt 3 performance but is closely followed by SanDisk’s Extreme Pro and LaCie’s Rugged SSD, both high-end 10Gbps devices. Following them, we threw in the low-cost (for an SSD), QLC NAND-based Crucial X8 and the DRAMless Samsung T7 Touch. We also added in an older SanDisk Extreme for good measure.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

DiskBench is a storage benchmarking tool that allows us to test the transfer or copy performance of a storage device with real data. We test external drives with three file transfers that consist of 25GB of photos (10GB of jpgs and 15GB of RAW photos), 50GB of movies, and 25GB of documents. First, we transfer each folder from a 1TB NVMe SSD to the external device; then we follow up by reading a 3.7GB 7-zip file and a 15GB movie back from the device.

When it came to writing our test folders, the My Passport held up well to LaCie’s Mobile Drive, only lagging it a few MBps here or there. WD’s My Passport even surpassed it during the photo transfer. In reading back our large .zip and movie files, again, the LaCie lead the WD drive by a bit. Compared to flash, as we would expect, these HDDs are much slower. So if you prioritize speed at all, you should probably opt for an SSD.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Test: Data Drive Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to measure the performance of a storage device. To test drives that store files rather than applications, we utilize the Data Drive Benchmark.

Averaging 64 MBps in bandwidth and scoring similarly to LaCie’s Mobile Drive in this test, WD’s My Passport provides enough performance to compete with CMR drives. It of course lags the flash competitors significantly with significantly higher latency.

Synthetics - ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

Synthetics - iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool that vendors often use to measure the performance of their devices.

Sequential performance comes in a little higher in our iometer testing, bursting up to 127/128 MBps read/write, and random performance is about what one should expect from an HDD. WD tweaked to the My Passport to perform pretty responsively under random writes, too.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery and Temperature

Write speed and temperature are two important and inter-related metrics for external devices. We threw in this one last test to measure the performance of the drive over a 15-minute window, writing to the full span of the drive. This test reveals if the drive has a pseudo-SLC cache, which is a small portion of faster-programmed flash that absorbs incoming write workloads. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.  

When possible, we also log the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

As one would expect with a hard drive, WD’s My Passport doesn’t feature a write cache. But, unlike the inconsistent write performance we’ve seen with other SMR HDDs, WD’s My Passport writes extremely consistently. It even surpasses the LaCie Mobile Drive in total writes by the time the 15 minutes is up, writing nearly 30GB more. This pales in comparison to what a good SSD can do, but is impressive for a mobile hard drive nonetheless. And, temps were never an issue when testing.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Aside from perhaps lacking some rubber on its exterior to keep it from sliding around on our test bench, there’s little to dislike about WD’s latest My Passport. Well, there is the issue of its interface. While most new devices feature USB Type-C ports, and some of the My Passport models (like the Mac and Ultra models) both feature the newer USB Type-C ports, as they should, WD lazily opted to forego the new standard on the vanilla version of the My Passport drive. Instead, the company slapped in the older and less-reliable SuperSpeed Micro USB B port with a USB-A cable. That seems dated in this day and age.

Still, while skimping out to probably save on manufacturing costs, the design provides ample bandwidth for the HDD’s underlying performance capabilities. Quite impressively, the drive displayed very consistent write performance, more so than even the CMR-based LaCie Mobile Drive. But WD’s latest My Passport portable HDD isn’t a record-breaker by any means, peaking around 120-130 MBps in testing.

If you’re on the hunt for speed, this is most definitely not an ideal choice—no HDD is. An SSD with 10Gbps or Thunderbolt 3 support would serve you much better, but of course also cost much more. This device’s performance pales in comparison to its flash competitors, which can hit 1 GBps or higher performance figures. But, if you’re looking to just back up your files or system, maybe transfer some files between PCs, or just need a lot of space for your data on the go without spending hundreds of dollars, the WD My Passport may be a near-ideal candidate.

This drive comes in capacities up to 5TB, and since street prices have started to fall, it has become a better value than ever. It looks good and comes backed by a plentiful 3-year warranty. To top things off, it boasts top-notch AES 256-bit hardware encryption password protection to keep your content secure from prying eyes. That’s great addition, especially if you’re the type who travels often and wants to keep sensitive data safe.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

It’s not easy to make portable drives exciting, but Western Digital is doing its best today. WD has launched a refreshed My Passport line of drives that tops out with a 5 terabyte option that’s just 0.75 inch thick. By comparison, the company’s previous 4TB portable drive is 0.8 inch thick. So while trimming off 0.05 inches isn’t exactly substantial, you do get 25% more storage in your pocketable portable hard drive.

As usual, WD will ship a My Passport for Mac model (in midnight blue, rather than tired silver), which comes with a removable USB-C cable. The black, light blue and red models (designed for Windows and other operating systems) will sport USB-A cables. All of the drives are USB 3.0, which is more than adequate to handle hard drive speeds. 

The new My Passport drives include access to software for password protection and 256-bit encryption, social media backup and cloud storage (Google Drive, Facebook and Dropbox) and other utilities. WD says the drives are available now, with a starting MSRP of $79.99 for the 1TB model. That’s pretty high compared to similar drives on the market. But given that the company’s existing My Passport drives currently start at $50 for the 1TB model on Amazon, we expect street pricing of the new models to be similar.

Dropbox announced that it will support the Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) second-factor authentication protocol on computers that use Intel’s Kaby Lake chips. Dropbox had already enabled support for U2F “security keys,” but this solution is meant to be more convenient for most users.

Universal 2nd Factor (U2F)

U2F is a second-factor protocol designed by the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance, which includes members such as Google, Microsoft, Intel, ARM, Qualcomm, and many other companies.

U2F is an open authentication protocol that acts similarly to a smart card, providing users an additional protection in case the credentials for some of their online accounts are stolen. A physical security token or a smart card is currently considered the most secure two-factor authentication method. It’s above mobile apps such as Google Authenticator or Authy and above SMS authentication, which NIST has already recommended to be deprecated as it has proven to be too insecure.

Increasing Convenience For Two-Factor Authentication

Although using a second factor security key isn’t all that complicated or frustrating to use, there are some who may wish it was a little easier or that they didn’t have to carry a USB security key around all the time that may get lost.

With Intel’s built-in support for U2F in its latest Kaby Lake chips, physical two-factor authentication may have just gotten even easier to use than even SMS-based two-factor authentication.

Intel said that after the U2F support is enabled in Dropbox--or other apps that support its U2F implementation--users only have to press a button on their computers’ screen to confirm that the U2F public key is generated by the owner of that U2F module and not by a remote attacker trying to access their online account.

“With Intel technologies, we implement the FIDO U2F protocol and are thus FIDO U2F compliant. The external USB key is replaced by a check for user presence that is implemented through a technology called protected transaction display, which renders that screen opaque to malware,” an Intel spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware.He added that “Instead of inserting an external USB key the user will simply click an ‘ok’ button on the screen to verify user presence and this is what we call the built in or integrated security key. That screen is protected in Intel's converged system manageability engine (CSME).”

Dropbox Adopts Kaby Lake U2F

Dropbox had already adopted the U2F protocol last year, a few weeks before reports that 68 million Dropbox accounts were exposed in a data breach, by implementing support for U2F-enabled Yubikeys.

Dropbox is now adopting Intel’s “built-in” solution, but as we’ll soon see it’s more of a convenience feature over SMS and app-based two-factor authentication than a method that’s just as secure as a regular hardware security key, such as a Yubikey.

A Dropbox representative told us via email that the registration process works as follows:

“Dropbox users can register multiple U2F keys (and thus multiple key pairs) for use on Dropbox. The U2F security key is "tied" to the user's account in the following sense: per the standard, during U2F registration, the security key generates a site-specific key pair for Dropbox. The private key never leaves the security key's hardware. Dropbox ties the public key and a Key Handle (essentially a key identifier) to the user's account. A different security key that has not been registered on the user's account will not have that user's private key and thus cannot be used to sign into the user's Dropbox account."

The Issue With Dropbox’s (And Other Players') U2F Implementation

As we can see, Dropbox is saying that nobody with a different U2F key can log into your account (assuming they had already stolen your Dropbox credentials as well), because Dropbox will only recognize the private key in your computer’s built-in U2F component.

So far, so good. The “problem” is that U2F, although an open standard that’s been available for at least the past couple of years, hasn’t been widely adopted yet. That means that if you’d want to login to Dropbox on a mobile device that doesn’t support U2F, you’d find yourself unable to login, because the service can’t identify your laptop’s U2F key.

As a workaround, Dropbox requires users to enable SMS or app two-factor authentication as well. That means both the SMS/app authentication will essentially work in parallel on other devices alongside the Intel U2F authentication enabled for your Kaby Lake PC.

This is where a security issue may appear, at least if you don’t believe SMS or app authentication are secure enough and, in some cases, they aren’t. If Dropbox users can authenticate to their accounts on other devices using a different form of authentication than Intel’s U2F, then an attacker could do that just as well. That means the security of the Intel U2F authentication for Dropbox is no better than the security of either SMS or app-based second factor authentication.

Other players, including Google, implement U2F authentication in a similar way, again because of a lack of adoption of U2F authentication right now, making it hard to use it unless it's available on all of users' devices.

Potential “Fixes”

Because Dropbox is specifically designed to work on multiple devices to sync files between them, the company isn’t left with much of a choice here. However, if it wanted to make the Intel U2F authentication as secure as normal security key authentication, it could remove the requirement for SMS/app authentication to work in parallel, and it could allow users to only use U2F as the second factor.

This could be combined with the ability to register multiple U2F keys in the Dropbox account, would allow users to benefit from the full security of U2F authentication, and only that. Users could even authenticate with U2F to the mobile Dropbox app through NFC-capable U2F security keys (such as Yubikey Neo).

Utilizing multiple U2F security keys to authenticate to multiple devices that have Dropbox on them could be done now as well. Even authenticating to the mobile Dropbox apps could work by using an NFC-enabled security key such as the Yubikey Neo.

However, there wouldn’t be much point to doing this now, if an attacker could still bypass all of those U2F keys with an intercepted SMS code that’s now mandatory to use for Dropbox users that enable U2F authentication.

Because the main point of built-in U2F authentication is convenience, Dropbox isn’t likely to change how the feature works and will likely prefer for U2F authentication to become ubiquitous before it removes the SMS/app authentication required registration.

However, as an additional layer of security, it could still send users email notifications whenever an U2F-enabled Dropbox account has been accessed with an alternative second factor authentication method.

If it’s the owner of the account doing it, then no harm done from receiving such a security notification that Google and other companies tend to send often as well whenever a user logs in from a different location, PC, or browser. However, if it’s an attacker trying to login to the user’s account with stolen credentials and SMS codes, then at least the owner of the account would be notified about it as well via email.

Ultimately, even SMS two-factor authentication is preferable to not using any two-factor authentication method at all, considering how often we keep seeing data breaches with tens or hundreds of millions of accounts being exposed these days. Therefore, services such as Dropbox that make two-factor authentication more convenient to use through the adoption of the U2F standard could increase its adoption significantly, thus improving the overall security of many more online accounts. The more accounts are protected by two-factor authentication the less impacted online services users will be by large data breaches--which often make other services' accounts vulnerable, too, because people tend to re-use their passwords.

Updated, 1/06/2017, 8:10am PT: After further discussions with Dropbox, we've updated the article to point out that other players in the technology industry tend to implement U2F and SMS/app-based authentication in parallel in the same way. However, this author still believes that because of this, the security of the U2F implementation is effectively no better than that of SMS/app-based two-factor authentication. But, as already mentioned, the simple fact that this is more automatic and thus more convenient should increase the overall security across Dropbox's accounts as more users start to enable Kaby Lake U2F authentication.

Dropbox acquired Clementine, a company providing secure voice and text messaging services for BYOD businesses. What exactly Dropbox plans to do with Clementine's technology is unclear, but it seems likely that the company will use this tech to develop its own BYOD services.

Although Dropbox is commonly used today by over 400 million users, more than 100,000 businesses also take advantage of the cloud storage service Dropbox provides. Businesses today, however, need to take advantage of a full range of software.

When a user brings his or her own device, however, security is paramount, and often difficult. These systems don't stay inside of a network that the company is able to secure, and when moved from one network to another, they become vulnerable to outside security threats that aren't present inside of the company. Clementine specialized in providing voice and text messaging services for companies with a BYOD policy, using more rigorous security features to protect the data on these devices.

The question now is what will Dropbox do with this newly acquired technology? The most likely answer is that Dropbox will expand its services to include these voice and text messaging services, and thus offer more services to businesses as a combined package. The company could even take steps to fully integrate these services into Dropbox and provide a single software solution capable of editing documents, sharing files, calling other users, and texting your colleagues.

Although the Dropbox service is relatively simple to use, a unified application capable of all of these functions would reduce the time moving between windows and could save time while collaborating on projects.

Because Dropbox has such a large number of non-business users, too, it wouldn't be surprising to see Dropbox provide this service to everyone, and ultimately become a competitor to programs like Skype, Tencent QQ, or Lync.

Follow Michael Justin Allen Sexton @LordLao74. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Thecus announced a new innovative NAS (Network Attached Storage) device that features a built-in lithium-ion battery backup to prevent data corruption caused by sudden power loss.

One of the most damaging things that can happen to electronic devices, and especially storage devices in RAID configurations, is sudden power loss. The unexpected shock of losing power can potentially cause data corruption. To prevent this from happening, the common solution is the purchase of a separate battery backup unit.

Thecus has opted to combine a mini-UPS directly into its N5810PRO NAS. The device features a 2000 mAh 28.8 Wh lithium-ion battery. This provides enough capacity to keep the NAS operational for approximately 30 seconds. If power is not restored within that time, the N5810PRO will begin to shut down all operations. Thecus said the added UPS will prevent the RAID array from compromise caused by sudden power loss.

The N5810PRO from Thecus comes equipped with an Intel Celeron J1900 Quad-Core SoC processor, with 4 GB of DDR3 memory. The NAS supports up to five SATA hard drives and supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 and JBOD. N5810PRO also includes five gigabit LAN RJ45 ports that support load balancing and failover with multiple network connections, along with other link aggregation features.

The N5810PRO includes five USB ports, two of them USB 2.0 and three USB 3.0. These ports can be used to back up phones, cameras or external hard drives. There is also a single HDMI port found on the back, which can be plugged directly into a TV for device management, Web browsing and HD video playback.

Included on the front of the device is a small LCD screen and four buttons used to navigate the menus. It can also be accessed remotely through a PC, or by using an application available for iOS and Android called "T-Dashboard" that lets you manage, upload to, or stream from the NAS.

The N5810PRO includes Acronis True Image software and supports snapshot backups. Cloud storage through DropBox, Amazon S3 and ElephantDrive are also natively supported.

Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Microsoft launched the "Outlook for iOS and Android" app yesterday, which was in fact a rebranding of an existing app called Acompli that Microsoft purchased in early December 2014. However, according to IBM developer René Winkelmeyer, the app presents some major security issues for the companies that intend to use it, and access should be immediately denied to enterprise users.

By far the biggest security issue that the developer found is that Microsoft itself has access to the users' email credentials, including both the username and the password:

“What I saw was breathtaking. A frequent scanning from an AWS IP to my mail account. Means Microsoft stores my personal credentials and server data (luckily I've used my private test account and not my company account) somewhere in the cloud! They haven't asked me. They just scan. So they have in theory full access to my PIM data," said Winkelmeyer in a blog post.

Only Gmail emails, which require OAuth authorization, don't give Microsoft your credentials, according to Acompli's own current Privacy Policy. However, Exchange emails do:

"Some email accounts (ones that use Microsoft Exchange, for example) also require that you provide your email login credentials, including your username, password, server URL, and server domain. Other accounts (Google Gmail accounts, for example) use the OAuth authorization mechanism which does not require us to access or store your password."

The second major security issue concerns Microsoft's servers acting as some sort of "man-in-the-middle" servers by intercepting a company's private emails as they pass from one user to another.

“Those messages, calendar events, and contacts, along with their associated metadata, may be temporarily stored and indexed securely both in our servers and locally on the app on your device. If your emails have attachments and you request to open them in our app, the service retrieves them from the mail server, securely stores them temporarily on our servers, and delivers them to the app."

Microsoft and Acompli promote this indexing service as making email delivery slightly faster, but that comes with a rather significant privacy and security cost for the companies utilizing Microsoft's new app. This email interception could be especially worrisome for companies that don't want their data easily shared with certain U.S. government agencies. Those agencies may not have proper jurisdiction over that data when it's held by Microsoft's enterprise customers in other countries. However, they could get access more easily to Microsoft's copies of the data. The Outlook for iOS and Android app also collects all calendar and contact data.

The third security issue, which Winkelmeyer described as a "data security nightmare," is that Microsoft has built-in connectors to OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive, which allow an enterprise user to easily share confidential company data with others, or worse, to access files that could be infected with malware, for example. Winkelmeyer's point is that this feature can easily bypass a company's security policies, such as app containerization.

Some of these security issues seem to be older Acompli issues, and given that Microsoft has merely rebranded the app as Outlook, it's possible the company didn't take a hard enough look at the app before re-launching it.

At the same time, Microsoft may have already been aware of the issues but decided to keep the service as is, because indexing of other companies' private email is something Microsoft may want to do. It remains to be seen how Microsoft will react to this discovery, and that reaction should tell us more about the company's intentions regarding these security issues.

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Comparison Guide To Cloud Storage Providers

Over the past 20 years, ubiquitous document access has become increasingly critical as digital portfolios have grown to span family, financial, work and school activities. At the same time, concerns about maintaining data safety and security have also escalated. Early services like FTP and peer-to-peer sharing remain popular, but predominantly with more technical users.

Today’s cloud storage provides simple file sharing, but also extends personal workstation file space, integrates document editing, includes real-time backup and document workflow. These services are cheap, fast, easy to use and require very little up front or long-term end user investment. The most time-consuming tasks, notably large backup and restore, can be automated or occur behind the scenes. 

Editor’s Note: Use the questionnaire below to have our sister site, BuyerZone, provide you with information from a variety of vendors for free:

The leaders include pure-play vendors Box, Dropbox and Google, and the two-walled garden approaches from Apple and Microsoft. The latter fall into this category because they offer cloud storage as a byproduct of a more robust offering – Apple began with a device backup service, and Microsoft uses OneDrive as the foundation to Office 365.  While Google Drive evolved from Google Docs (and still provides rich document editing), it can be more easily evaluated on its pure storage merits.

Among the offerings there is parity in features, functionality, security and price, but we aim to show where they differ.

What am I getting out of it?

From a practical storage perspective, these services offer a token amount of free space, with upgrades ranging up to paid plans for unlimited storage. For services promoting unlimited storage, limitations occur around file sizes. For example, Box Enterprise caps files at 5GB, whereas Google Drive has a very generous 1TB maximum. Note that “free” is a relative term – to open a free iCloud account, users must have an Apple iOS or Mac OS device.

Google’s top tier of $3600/year for 30TB of anywhere storage is not a lot of money. Personal plans ranging from $100-300/year are extremely reasonable for people interested in backing up computers; sharing files with colleagues, family members and classmates; and using cloud storage to support a small business.

The open (pure-play) cloud storage services allow storing any type, style, and kind of file. All services use Web browser interfaces by default (to create, upload and view files), and all have varying degrees of viewers. Google allows users to preview over 20 file types, Box has a high-fidelity mobile engine and Microsoft allows users to open Office files in their native format without a subscription. These are not replacements for fit-for-purpose presentation tools or AutoCAD, but they suffice for most situations.

Browser drag-and-drop upload is handled so well that it is now an expected feature, and is surprising when not supported. Even Microsoft provides drag-and-drop and right-click support across browsers and platforms, although the real-time feedback lags others (see Dropbox real-time identification).

Desktop synchronization is a powerful feature for users backing up or extending their computers to the Cloud. In this area, Dropbox shines. Other services lag behind either due to business decisions (Box prefers people use the browser to keep real-time file control with administrators), background service system resource spikes or technical gaps.

More than a feature comparison, we looked at the services as three use cases. The first is personal storage, or extending one’s own file system to the cloud. The second is sharing, especially of moderately size to large documents. Sharing was looked at in both a one-to-one and group sharing, with people who had accounts on the service and those who did not.

Finally, the third use case was extensibility, API and SDK. For this, we explored services’ abilities to be a platform or infrastructure backbone to support a small business or gaming-in-the-cloud.

Oh, a note about performance testing. We recognize that readers would be interested in performance, so why didn't we test speed? In our findings, performance varied wildly based on a number of factors related to physical connection and service architecture. First, our primary testing facility was serviced by high-speed cable. As is the case with many cable Internet packages, ours had a 'boost' function which artificially inflates initial download performance, then slows remaining downloads. Second, services vary based on their sync mechanism. Dropbox (and backup service Mozy) perform block- or bit-level replication. This means that once files are initially sent to the Cloud, additional saves only synchronize what actually has changed. This is most apparent on modern-era Office documents, which utilize a standards-based XML data structure. Finally, Dropbox also employs LAN sync, which allows computers running on a physical LAN to sync files locally, rather than downloading updates from the Cloud. Two caveats: updates are still sent to the Cloud, and when installing Dropbox on a new computer (or if the index becomes corrupted), all files must be re-synchronized from the Cloud.

Box Cloud Storage - Pricing And Features Overview

Box is all business. The service has gained tremendous momentum over the past year, and is now at an estimated 25 million individual customers and 225,000 enterprise ones.

The Box browser user interface is well-organized, streamlined, intuitive and feature-rich, offering a wide variety of built-in and third-party capabilities. Box behaves like a full application running in a Web browser, including drag-and-drop uploads, right-clicks and top menus. The user interface feels more like a competitor to enterprise tools like Documentum, OpenText LiveLink, IBM FileNet P8 and Microsoft SharePoint than a direct peer to the other services we tested. However, it is a cloud service at its core, and Box offers its sleek functionality and powerful document review (workflow) and collaboration tools to all users.

While administrative controls, unlimited storage and capabilities like Salesforce.com CRM integration are reserved for paying customers, the power and flexibility of Box means that individuals can quickly open a personal account and purchase additional storage.

Box has the most powerful full-text search of all the services, and returns the best results. For instance, while Dropbox returned one result for a sample query that included unique terms split between file name and full-text search, Box returned 58 spot-on results. The instant-results drop-down is handy, and the full-text index rivals enterprise solutions.

On Box’s mobile apps, all file names are easy to see with its thin font, as compared to the other services, which often truncate file names. File sorting can be done in three ways (name, date or size) and the thin iOS 7-matching font allows for more file details than other services.

Both the full browser preview and mobile app viewers are feature-rich, with the most accurate file renditions, including high-quality fonts and correct PowerPoint slide forms. But this comes with a cost – we found that file sizes were large, and previews consumed far more bandwidth than other services. Since users cannot choose between a low- or high-quality image, quick-viewing PDFs is much quicker using other services, even over Wi-Fi. Box errs on the side of quality, which can cost time and money over mobile connections. To its credit, Box warns you when you attempt to preview files on mobile networks.

Collaboration and Synchronization

At its core, Box is a document collaboration service, and performs an excellent job at this task. Everything reasonable and intuitive is here, including the file lock status, colored “flags” on files indicating version numbers, metadata tags, access statistics and workflow task management.

Box is first a Web app and secondarily a synchronization-to-the-desktop service. For people looking to extend their file systems to the Cloud, Box folder synchronization can be set at the top level (like most other services) and – somewhat unique in online services – at each sub-folder. Synchronizing individual folders to a PC is controlled via the Web application, but cannot be tweaked by the operating system (OS) extension.

Sending links to shared folders is also straightforward, and can be accomplished through the browser, mobile app and aforementioned OS extension. There is a lot of power to sharing in Box: links can be open access or only apply to pre-determined collaborators, shared files can be restricted to view-only (not download) and they can be set to automatically expire. These three thoughtful settings are additional mechanisms for the security-conscious or absent-minded.

We noticed a small bug in testing – if you accidentally click on “share” in  the browser UI, it immediately sets a link (indicated by the chain link icon) before you actually complete the full action/decision by clicking OK. “Un-sharing” doesn’t take much time, but this can be a security issue for those who don’t realize it.

Integrations

Box has a very comprehensive API integration program, with more than 1000 integrations through more than 550 partners, including CRM, office applications, social collaboration, security and product/project management applications. However, it is important to note that access to the enterprise integrations requires the highest tier of Box pricing, Box Enterprise (or the custom-priced Box Elite). Box Business and Box Enterprise customers also get Active Directory and SSO integration to align with corporate accounts and policies. With a focus on enterprise application integration, Box APIs are designed to make the service a platform for large systems and less of a “developer playground” for small developers.

Two of the more interesting integrations are with Microsoft Office and Google Apps. These illustrate Box’s commitment to being a cloud storage provider and not an application vendor. It clearly separates them from those who try to do both.

Finally, Box has a Content API that exposes all of its key functions to organizations looking to build their own content management platform.

Pricing is slightly different from the other cloud storage vendors. Since Box is designed for the enterprise, caps are set based on individual file size rather than overall storage volume. This is reasonable since bandwidth and practicality dictate a natural glass ceiling. In the past, Box offered lifetime 50GB storage promotions, so there are a number of well-endowed personal accounts in the market. Box truly realizes the promise set forth by cloud storage and sharing.

Box Pricing

Dropbox Cloud Storage - Pricing And Features Overview

[Editor's Note: After we finished testing and this article was being finalized, Dropbox announced some changes to the service, especially around pricing, but also with new functionality. We detail some of those changes under the subheading "Update" at the end of this page.]

Dropbox was initially a “magic folder” targeted at consumers, but it is now embraced by more than 300 million users, including universities, healthcare systems and other corporations. Dropbox was a pioneer in extending local PC content to the cloud for file sharing. While it is expensive – especially compared to Google’s 2014 pricing – its bit-level replication, ability to recover deleted files and unlimited version control through Packrat make for an award-winning tool.

Memory footprint is also something Dropbox users should be aware of. In our testing on a mix of machines with 8-16GB of RAM, the Dropbox client consumed between 70 and 160MB (the second-largest behind Windows SVCHOST).

Once installed, adding files through the browser interface is as easy as dragging and dropping them. Creating folders is also very easy, as is sharing those folders with others. We found that full sharing can only be controlled at root-level directories. This makes for an often top-weighted directory structure.

Two unique benefits of Dropbox: the service is intelligent enough to identify when multiple Dropbox-synced computers are on a local network, and the ability to re-build the Dropbox file index based on files that are already located on the local disk. The former feature allows for fast localized sync of files without having to go to the Dropbox cloud. The second feature comes into play if you install Dropbox on a brand new PC. You can copy your entire Dropbox directory structure – and files – and Dropbox will automatically re-build the index without having to re-download files from the cloud. These two features save bandwidth and time, while recognizing all of the file and folder security and sharing controls previously set.

Because it is a consumer-oriented service at its core, Dropbox makes purchase, setup, download and initial file sync very easy. For casual users, the Web interface is simple yet feature-rich, and has some unique capabilities unavailable in other interfaces, like browsing file creation, deletion and update events. While Dropbox lacks true workflow, I used event viewing to see changes by other users in shared folders and as a means to perform multi-user version control.

Syncing files

Backing up, sharing and syncing files are the core uses of cloud storage service, and Dropbox does this well. All clients work consistently, and syncs are generally quick. Starting up Windows and Mac clients (upon resume-from-sleep or initial boot) can take between 15 seconds and five minutes, presumably while the client is loading the cache and comparing the file list with the cloud. Initial start-up and sync time has become slower over the past two years. With desktop client version 2.8.2, it was not unusual to see the first sync 5-10 minutes into a Windows session.

Dropbox has a unique feature called "selective sync," which let each of our environments inherit a different persona. The feature allows users to turn on or off top-level directories on a per-machine basis, which minimizes the storage footprint and file clutter across PCs. For those using Dropbox on multiple computers running on a network (small business or family household), Dropbox provides the option to sync locally instead of going back to the cloud. If the same file is saved by multiple PCs or users, Dropbox will append the computer name and “Conflicted Copy” to the file, rather than reconciling changes (Microsoft OneDrive does a much better job of multi-user editing).

What shouldn’t be missed is Dropbox’s incremental (block- or bit-level) replication. Instead of synchronizing entire files, Dropbox only needs to update the pieces of the files that are actually changed, greatly minimizing bandwidth and sync times. This is a very high-end document management feature now available to the masses. It also conserves bandwidth.

Version control is supplemented by Packrat, which is Dropbox’s name for maintaining revision history over an unlimited time horizon (30-day file history is standard). This feature has saved us a couple of times, but you can only review versions via a Web browser. Dropbox, in response to customer feedback, has updated Packrat’s Restore function to work like enterprise document management systems (the restored version becomes the newest iteration). This is very powerful. However, moving directories eliminates all version history of files within the folders. Moving folders back to the original location shows the version history including when files were “deleted” and “added.” Version history needs some work to become folder independent.

Dropbox ‘Ecosystem’

Any good software platform has a rich set of third-party participants, and Dropbox is no exception. Dropbox has two major categories of extensions: drop-ins and three categories of Dropbox APIs.

Drop-ins are a simple way to add the two most common Dropbox functions to existing apps via prebuilt code: Chooser (or "Choose From") and Saver ("Save To").  While simple in nature, it is powerful in execution, because apps that use lots of structured content (but would value from unstructured documents and images) can leverage the Dropbox infrastructure with very little coding and QA.

In the formal API category, Dropbox has long promoted its platform to developers, who can add the ability view, create or edit rich documents. One of my favorite examples is the Microsoft Office editor CloudOn. Since editing remotely-stored files requires strong security, the newer value-added API includes security/encryption software. There are also integration modules for multi-platform mobile apps and Dropbox storage for pure structured data. The final API type is designed for smaller developers who wish to save "game state" and those who value conflict resolution through advanced data and file locking rules.

With greater corporate interest comes the need for additional hooks into the service and a management console. The API set is rich, but lags Box on real-world adoption and internal promotion (Box has right-click send-to Docusign and Chatter out of the box, for example). Dropbox is currently promoting “over 300,000 apps on the Dropbox platform,” but it is difficult to discern what exactly an app is and the level of integration.

Security

Dropbox doesn’t have built-in encryption, but is quick to refer users and organizations to various options supported through the Dropbox developer network.

One note for security-conscious users: those who synchronize files with their PCs are inherently able to take content with them, and since Dropbox uses PC/Mac sync as a core selling point, you should be aware that in our testing we found that “unsharing” folders still left files in our Dropbox cache directory, or allowed us to recover deleted files that weren’t really permanently deleted. The solution is simple: don’t install the desktop client. But of course that removes a key benefit.

One additional security worry surfaced in recent months – hackers are spreading malware through public Dropbox links (dl.dropbox.com). This is a security hole Dropbox needs to fix quickly.

Summer 2014 Updates

Dropbox made some recent changes to the service to reflect customer requirements and to gain parity in a few key areas. The most obvious change is the "Pro" tier, which includes 1TB of storage for the same price as the previous 100GB tier of storage. However, there is a lot more to the Pro service, particularly around security. Dropbox now has Remote Wipe, a feature that will let you remove Dropbox files on a device that is lost or stolen. We did not have an opportunity to test this, but previously found that files removed from unshared folders lingered on PCs in the .dropbox.cache folder.

Second, Dropbox allows the expiration of shared links and specific view/edit permissions on shared folders. This feature already exists in other services like Box, so Dropbox is playing catch-up. Finally, Pro comes with extended version history of up to one year, replacing the need for Packrat for many users. Dropbox is not offering Packrat to new users, and is actively promoting the change in version history policy as of November 1, 2014.

Dropbox Pricing

Google Drive Cloud Storage - Pricing And Features Overview

Google’s Drive service is an extremely affordable cloud storage option, yet very powerful for collaboration and teamwork. The features around team review and collaboration have been enhanced and polished through increased file change notifications, "live" in-document highlights, and integration with Google Hangouts online meeting tool. Google really thought through the functionality that both consumers and business users need.

In its most simple form, Google allows users to make comments and share files as viewers, collaborators or co-owners. This is simple and fast, yet powerful. While other tools can also do this, Google does the collaboration better through its tight integration between storage and editing tools, and its focus on platform-independent browser-based apps. The apps and ecosystem also work on Chromium zero- or minimal-storage devices.

For word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents, Google's full-featured and feature-rich Docs, Sheets, Forms and Drawing tools edge close to a "walled garden" approach. However, the document editing isn't required, nor is it forced on users as part of the value proposition.

File changes and updates are outlined when viewing files, including color highlights by user. The activity tab in the browser window shows all file changes and viewing activity within a folder, and lets you see detailed changes when individual files are selected. Unfortunately, we could not see detailed activity on older documents; many documents not edited prior to January 2014 did not have any logged activity in our Drive. 

As we tested Google Drive, the lines between the consumer-oriented Drive and Google Enterprise Apps appeared to be thinning. The late June 2014 announcement of Google Drive for Business further validated this. For $10 per month, Google offers auditing, reporting, retention rules and control over desktop client installation. The company  also addressed questions around security, specifically documents at rest and in transit, through security controlled via the enterprise administration console and mobile device management.

Google differentiates Drive around cross-platform usability. The iOS and Android apps are very polished, and have improved greatly over the past year. For example, fonts are slim and easy to read, and folders are now displayed on top of the file list, both of which make browsing Drive a much more logical task than with Dropbox, which mixes folders and files together in a list. However, Google removed the built-in editing capability from its Drive mobile app in early 2014, so users must now separately install Google apps to have native editing functionality on the go. 

Another interesting feature of Google Drive is its ability to convert Office documents to the native Google format within the Drive Web interface, and pull text from PDF documents and image files. The latter functionality acts as “lightweight OCR” and can save users time if they need the raw text out of otherwise read-only destination formats. This is optional, and can be controlled for corporate purposes through the admin console or via PDF creation rules (previously Google Docs allowed opening password-enabled PDF documents, but this was fixed).

The only perplexing piece of Google Drive is, surprisingly, its search functionality, especially compared to Box. First, the search results are sparse, the quick-results aren't instantaneous, and to engage a full-text search query, you have to take extra steps and go to the full list of results. Second, with search as Google’s core competence, the results screen pales in comparison to what we are accustomed from other Google products (for example, there aren’t highlights or explanations of where, within files, the full-text terms are found). 

Google has an incredibly powerful and open Drive SDK, including deep integration with Android app back-ends, and birthing many Drive-centric products like Teamlab Office (an excellent alternative to Microsoft Office). The Google API allows developers to write Drive applications in Java, Python, Javascript, .NET, Ruby, Go and Node.js. Getting started is as easy as setting up an account in Google’s Developer Console and attaching to a Drive-enabled Google account.

The Drive ecosystem and Google's open ethos has resulted in Chrome apps for Microsoft Office, Box and other products and services that arguably compete with Google on various products.

Google Drive Pricing

Apple iCloud Storage - Pricing And Features Overview

Apple's iCloud was originally developed as a backup mechanism for Apple devices and associated apps. It has come a long way in the past three years, but still shows the legacy of its core purpose.

For Apple computer and device users, iCloud is a no-brainer. It is seamless across all Apple devices, and the Windows client/plug-in extends contacts, calendar, tasks, bookmarks and photos to a vast majority of PC users. With Apple's new (2014) pricing model, iCloud is both attractive to end users and developers, the latter of whom get a nearly bottomless glass of storage - via CloudKit - for file assets, app development sandbox space and database storage.

The initial use of iCloud stands true today: it is an excellent backup system for iOS devices. The scheduled backup mechanism can help those who lose or damage an iOS device get back to their most recent state in a matter of minutes (only risking the loss of photos and videos).

Integration with MacOS has become tighter over the past few years. The Mac control panel is pre-installed on updated versions of Mountain Lion (10.8), and is fully integrated with Mavericks (10.9). Apple's Mail, Address Book and Calendar apps quickly download and sync data from iCloud, and mirror what is found on iOS devices and the iCloud Web interface.

Apple also makes a Windows iCloud control panel available for download. While iCloud integrates contacts, calendar and tasks with Microsoft Outlook, and bookmarks with Internet Explorer, the majority of Windows users install the control panel to view and sync photos taken by iOS devices. In my testing, I was a little frustrated with slow photo browsing and Windows Explorer crashes, demonstrating that Windows desktop integration is a work in progress.

While Apple is more expensive for traditional non-developer consumers than the pure-player Cloud storage vendors, Apple also provides the iWork applications – and excellent templates – for owners of devices that ship with iOS 7 (a $99 value).

The Web-based versions are still in "beta" according to Apple, but do not appear to be works-in-progress. The Web interfaces are clean, fast and easy to use, without being too cartoonish. Editing documents on iPhones and iPads has been improved dramatically in the past year. Document synchronization across Apple iDevices is seamless and fast.

The most challenging issue with iCloud is that it’s difficult to get documents out of the system. Since iCloud is designed as a walled garden for Apple content, sharing documents or collaborating with others – key features embraced by other services – require extra steps or just aren’t available. For example, link sharing requires collaborators to have an iCloud account. Downloaded presentations - even those in Microsoft PowerPoint format - have issues with fonts, objects and other formatting. This is not a “pure” cloud drive.

Based on the investment Apple is making, take a cautious look at iCloud if you have an Apple device foundation, but also want platform-independent, browser-based access to documents along with polished templates. The two greatest issues – high cost of plans and slow photo browsing – should improve. The “free” iWork applications are a boon to casual office users, as they are available across platforms and through a browser interface.

Apple iCloud Pricing

Microsoft OneDrive Cloud Storage - Pricing And Features

Microsoft rebranded SkyDrive as OneDrive earlier this year, and continues as a service primarily centered around Microsoft Office documents. While any file can be stored and shared in OneDrive, the greatest benefit is gained when saving, viewing and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

The core file storage component has improved because you get a larger amount of storage at a much lower cost, making OneDrive competitive with the pure-play providers. As of the summer of 2014, Microsoft increased the quota for paying Office 365 users to 1TB each for up to five users. The free service increased from 7GB to 15GB.

The ultimate value proposition of OneDrive revolves around tight Microsoft Office file and application integration. While the first product to utilize OneDrive for its cloud back-end was OneNote (a cross-platform note-taking tool), the service provides storage for all Office and non-Office files, with varying levels of integration and viewing capabilities.

You can view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files within a browser or download them for local editing, including directly within Microsoft Office 2013 applications. This is similar to the way SharePoint, running on corporate networks, allows cloud-based open and save, embedded right within Office 2010 and Office 2013.

However, there are some caveats. The first is that in order to provide a seamless experience, usernames have to “sync” between the host computer and the OneDrive service. This is easy on Windows 8 and Office 2013, which have direct OneDrive logins, but less so on earlier platforms, notably Windows 7 and Office 2010, which lack the direct sign-in hooks. In my testing, opening a Word, PowerPoint or Excel document for editing on a local instance of Office 2010 resulted in the system thinking that I was a different user from the OneDrive user I was signed in as.

For those wishing to strictly use Office in a browser, simple file viewing also has its limitations; we could only view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Support for Visio and Project documents is missing, resulting in an awkward “iTunes-like” permissions dialog box asking if the file opened properly or, if not, whether I wanted to purchase the tool.

Microsoft does provide a local computer sync app, just like the other file sharing services do, and it is conceptually very similar to the “Save to SharePoint site” feature in Office (2010+). For many users, this is an attractive means to save and retrieve documents, but from our experience with the earlier SharePoint integration, we found that it was difficult to remove old sites and/or strip the network save out completely. As noted above, Windows 8 and Office 2013 are superior in this regard, as they are directly tied into OneDrive accounts at the core, removing the need to download a separate sync app.

On the Mac OS X side, the Office programs are a generation behind, lacking the integration with OneDrive found on Windows. The only Mac Office application to use the new Office foundation platform is OneNote, which has been integrated with OneDrive (SkyDrive) for some time. Also as of this writing, Microsoft has not officially announced a date for the next version of Office Mac that aligns OneDrive sign-in with Office 2013 and Office 365 sign in.

While Microsoft provides a suite of applications and a large amount of storage, our primary beef with OneDrive is that it is not a differentiated service beyond the Office apps, and getting content into and out of the system is cumbersome compared to the cloud storage alternatives. While Windows 8.x integration is good, this addresses a small portion of the OS market (between 11% and 13% of OS shipments, according to The Next Web May 2014 research).

The greatest value in OneDrive comes from the premium service, including the most current version of Microsoft Office with automated Cloud-based backup. We just wish Microsoft took the next step to include Project and Visio to differentiate itself from the other players.

Microsoft OneDrive Pricing

We still don't know exactly how the hacking into the iCloud accounts of celebrities happened. One of the reasons for that is that the accounts may have been hacked in different ways, making it hard to pinpoint a single method. Some of the actresses may have had their iCloud passwords brute forced directly (which is what Apple claims) and others may have had their Dropbox password stolen, and then the hackers used those to either get the photos from Dropbox or log into the Cloud accounts. Others may have had weak security questions that were easily guessed and then used to get access to the accounts, and so on.

One scary method that seems to still be working, according to some hackers, is using forensics tools like the ones the police use all the time to hack into phones (with or without a warrant, although a recent Court ruling said the police need a warrant to do it).

This brings us to something authorities have supported for years: the idea that if you can only give back doors or vulnerabilities to the "good guys", then everything will be fine. But time and time again we learn that these very same vulnerabilities or back doors can and will be used by the "bad guys", too. If there's an open door in a house, that's "meant for the good guys", there's nothing stopping the bad guys from finding it and entering the house, too. It's the same with software.

One piece of software that's being sold by a Russian company to government agencies all over the world as a forensics tool is called the Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker (EPPB). Forensics tools are typically used when the device is already in the possession of the people doing the data extraction, but EPPB seems to be able to extract all the data from an iOS device remotely by impersonating the device itself, as long as an interested party already has the user's iCloud credentials.

EPPB is not the only forensics tools out there that can obtain data from iOS devices. One from Oxygen, for example, promised to take advantage of the recently discovered "iOS back doors," just weeks after the flaws were revealed. The tool could obtain data such as SMS, pictures and videos, but also instant messages from other third-party apps.

If Apple is serious about the security of its users, it will need to close any loopholes in its software and operating systems. In order to do this, Apple will need to pay much closer attention to companies offering such forensics tools and try to make those tools obsolete as soon as possible, noting well the "features" they offer for cracking iOS devices. This way Apple can make sure another major hack of iCloud accounts or iOS devices is much less likely to happen in the future, but the same strategy can also stop many other, perhaps less popular, attacks against regular (that is, non-celebrity) individuals.

Devices or services can never be 100 percent secure, and it's true that often the user bears some fault for using weak security, but Apple can also be more proactive about protecting its users.

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Now that the entire family is online thanks to smartphones, tablets, notebooks and so on, every home should have a central solution for storing music, pictures, video files, documents – you name it. The solution should be accessible from anywhere through easy-to-use software so that even impatient teens can deposit and go as they please.

Toshiba is now offering such solutions that, according to the company, address past complications of storing files. Called the Canvio Home Backup and Share, the device is a network attached storage (NAS) hub providing either 2 TB or 3 TB of storage, depending on your budget. The device is accompanied by easy-to-install and easy-to-use software so that anyone can set up the NAS on the local network.

"Set-up is a no-brainer for anyone with basic knowledge of computer hardware and software. Then, once it's up and running, you and your community of users will have no trouble logging in and finding the files and other content you want, thanks to a single application with a clear menu and intuitive interface," reads the product sheet.

Users can access the files from anywhere, whether it's in the home or away on a family trip. When at home, Toshiba's Canvio NAS allows users to stream video and music to DNLA-compliant devices, Windows PCs, Mac computers, iPhone and iPad mobile digital devices and Android-based smartphones and tablets.

Toshiba's Canvio Home provides only one hard drive bay, a Gigabit Ethernet interface, and a USB 2.0 port for adding even more files to share. For backing up files from Apple devices, Time Machine will be used. For Windows and Android-based devices, the included software will do image-based backups or incremental backups.

"It is so much more than just a box to drop your files in. This is safe, private storage that you can share," says Maciek Brzeski, vice president of product marketing and development, Branded Storage Products, Toshiba Digital Products Division.

Western Digital launched a similar product back in October 2013: the My Cloud family of personal cloud solutions. Like the Canvio Home product, WD's My Cloud also provides both local and remote access to files. Users can even transfer files from Dropbox and other public cloud accounts using WD's My Cloud mobile app.

On the pricing front, WD is charging $149.99 USD for 2 TB, $179.99 USD for 3 TB and $249.99 USD for 4 TB. Toshiba is a bit pricier than WD, charging $199.99 USD for the 2 TB model and $259.99 USD for the 3 TB model.

For more information about the Canvio Home Backup & Share products, the 2 TB version is listed here, and the 3 TB version is listed here.

Netgear's new portfolio of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices consists of three desktop models and a one 1U rackmount. It runs on the company's ReadyNAS OS 6 platform that is intended to offer "storage made easy" for both the home and small- to medium-sized businesses. According to the press release, the new range of devices provides features and capabilities previously available from expensive and large scale enterprise vendors at a significantly lower cost.

The ReadyNAS OS 6 comes with a variety of innovating features, such as on-box data protection with unlimited snapshot capability, cloud-managed replication, and XRAID automatic volume expansion. The unit also supports native encryption, real-time anti-virus protection, and seamless file synchronization with ReadyDROP and Dropbox. All of Netgear's ReadyNAS devices support SATA drives of up to 4 TB in capacity. The 300 and 500 series also includes an eSata expansion slot with the capacity to handle up to 84 TB of storage.

"We designed the new ReadyNAS OS from the ground up with ease-of-use in mind, so users can confidently centralize and back up all their data," said Matt Pahnke, senior product marketing manager for NETGEAR Storage. "Customers could not be more excited about our revolutionary ReadyCLOUD technology for cloud-based set-up, provisioning, and management. The cloud-based set-up and comprehensive, but simple-to-use interface is unlike anything else in the NAS market."

Finally, the ReadyNAS OS 6 features integration with the genie+ marketplace, a platform for third party developers to deliver applications and services that can be installed on ReadyNAS devices with a single click. In addition to applications already released, Netgear reportedly has over 600 developers registered to create additional content following the device's release date.

Select models of the NETGEAR ReadyNAS 100 and 300 series are now available worldwide through reseller channels and a variety of e-commerce sites. The full line of new ReadyNAS models will be available in the second quarter of 2013 through authorized NETGEAR PowerSHIFT channel partners and other reseller channels and e-commerce sites.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said that cloud storage service Dropbox is nothing more than a "little startup".

SkyDrive, the software giant's own cloud storage service, has more than 200 million users as of October, 2012, as revealed by former Windows president Steven Sinofsky (who is, incidentally, said to have been fired by Ballmer himself). Dropbox reached the 100 million users milestone back in November.

"Well, you've got to remember, 100 million sounds like a pretty small number to me, actually," Ballmer told BusinessWeek. "We've got a lot more Office users. And actually if you even want to go to the cloud, we have a lot of Hotmail and SkyDrive users. I'm not beating on Dropbox. They're a fine little startup and that's great."

The executive's comments come after Microsoft launched Office 2013, which allows users to save documents to SkyDrive. Ballmer, however, has had a history of bashing the competition. Back in 2007, he stressed that the iPhone will never account for a significant market share. He also criticized Android by stating that Google's mobile platform can only be used by a computer scientist.

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The company just released RapidDrive 1.0, an application that integrates a RapidDrive account into the file system of Windows and makes the cloud storage appear as a regular hard drive.

A key feature of the integration is that files can now be edited without having to externally log into the RapidDrive account, which is a functionality that makes the service more attractive to store files a greater variety of formats. the service offers 1 GB of storage with limited features free of charge, while 30 GB are priced at 9.90 Euros per month.

If it is about plain capacity, services such as Google Drive provide up to 5 GB for free, and offer capacities of 25 GB to 16 TB ($2.49 to $799.99 per month).

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Inventor Daniel Chin has begun selling the small box, which can turn any USB-based storage into a personal cloud device, for $100.

Funded with $262,000 back in January, CloudFTP creates its own ad-hoc wireless network and acts as a file server for Wi-Fi enabled products when connected to a USB mass storage device. According to Chin, up to three Wi-Fi clients can stream data from the device at the same time.

The hardware of the box includes a 2600 mAh battery that powers the device and a USB device for up to five hours when not connected to a power source. Data processing is handled by an ARM Core-A9 design, wireless connectivity is established via integrated 802.11b/g/n support. A small display on the front of the box displays the SSID as well as its network address.

CloudFTP can automatically connect to cloud storage services like iCloud, Dropbox, box.net and synchronize data.

Who said the netbook was dead? Not Asus who on Thursday officially launched the ultra-thin, MeeGo-based Eee PC X101. As promised earlier this year, the device sports a $199 pricetag and will begin shipping in September although several online vendors like PCSuperStore and Directron are already taking pre-orders.

Under the hood (what there is of it), the netbook sports a single-core Intel Atom N435 or N455 processor, 1 GB of DDR3 memory (up to 2 GB max), 8 GB of SSD storage, 2 GB of DropBox cloud storage, 802.11 b/g/n connectivity on the 2.4 GHz band, a 0.3MP webcam and a 10.1-inch LED backlight WSVGA (1024 x 600) screen.

Other features include a 3-cell battery offering up to 4 hours, two USB 2.0 ports, an SD / SDHC / MMC card reader, Bluetooth v3.0, stereo speakers and a headphone jack. The netbook measures just 262 x 180 x 17.6-mm and weighs 2.3 pounds without the battery. It arrives in three textures including white, red and brown.

So what makes this netbook so cheap (other than a lack of an optical drive)? That would be the Linux-based MeeGo open-source OS that was dumped by Nokia but now officially "hosted" by the Linux Foundation.

"The MeeGo software platform is designed to give developers the broadest range of device segments to target for their applications, including netbooks, handheld computing and communications devices, in-vehicle infotainment devices, smart TVs, tablets and more – all using a uniform set of APIs based on Qt," reads the description over on the MeeGo website. "For consumers, MeeGo will offer innovative application experiences that they can take from device to device."

Asus will eventually offer the X101H model which will reportedly sport Windows 7. There's also mention that this model is slated to have more RAM, a higher storage capacity, a VGA port and possibly a 6-cell battery, but the company is still keeping tight-lipped, so stay tuned.