If you have ever had some data you wanted to store in a safe place but couldnt think of quite the right thing that would be safe and secure, I know how you feel. I have had this idea for a few years, the perfect thing would be a freakin’ Minidisc. Why? Do you know anyone with a minidisc player? If you do no know anyone, (I certainly do not) then who is going to read your sensetive information?
Did you know that minidiscs can store data? As a matter of fact, there’s a SCSI Sony Diskman that plugs into a Mac. It acts as a conventional cdrom drive. In addition, it is also supported by the Linux kernel.
A lot of minidisc devices have what’s called a service mode, which allows you to do some interesting hacks. What’s better than a tweakable, hackable, portable, unconventional, and high capacity (1+GiB) storage device for sensitive information?
There are also plenty of service manuals out there for those of us absurd enough to do some modifications.
Sony has been doing a little bit to help those of us absurd enough to store data away on a minidisc with the new Hi-MD discs.
Now obviously, you wouldnt want to store data on there in plain text, thats why encrypting filesystems are so great thanks to linux crypto loops (more on that later).
For now, head on over to http://www.minidisc.org/. All kinds of interesting information if you want to mess around with minidisc data storage.
And last but not least, if it proves to be not quite the right thing for you, at least you have a kick-ass digital audio player in the end as an added bonus.
–ahazaurus