Project USB Sentinel Technology Preview released!

I'm very happy to announce the first public release of a new technology from MokaFive called USB Sentinel. It works with any standard USB drive to make it more reliable, improve performance, and extend the life of the drive. Click to download it here.

We have a lot of experience with USB drives. Over the years, we've identified some issues with running software on USB drives that limit their usefulness. USB Sentinel is designed to address those issues. See some screenshots.

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• Issue 1: USB drives are easy to disconnect, accidentally or otherwise.  And no one wants to click to safely remove the device.

When you are using a USB drive on a laptop, it is very easy to bump the drive and cause it to momentarily disconnect.  Unfortunately, this causes any software that is running on the drive to crash and can corrupt your data.  When you want to disconnect safely, you have to navigate and click to safely remove the device or you can lose data. Even when just using your USB to copy files, it is annoying to have to click to safely shut down the device.

USB Sentinel allows you to unplug your USB drive at any time without losing data. If there are still pending writes to the drive, it will ask you to replace the drive. Execution continues where you left off with no lost data.

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• Issue 2: Many USB drives on the market do not have good performance, especially with writes and small file operations.

All USB drives are not created equal when it comes to performance. Unfortunately, it is not easy to determine the performance of a drive from the packaging or the manufacturer specification. Even raw read/write performance doesn't always give a good indication of real-world performance. We've seen drives that have blazing fast throughput but are slow-as-a-dog on actual usage.

USB Sentinel optimizes the performance of your USB drive by working together with the USB controller chip, collating and batching operations for improved performance.

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• Issue 3: USB drives burn out quickly with intensive usage.

We have a lot of experience with USB drives over the years, and they are not always a reliable medium for intensive usage.  Even though modern drives have sophisticated wear leveling algorithms, they can still burn out quickly when performing many overwrite operations.  MLC drives typically only have 10000 write/erase cycles before they burn out, and 10000 cycles can be easily exhausted when software is using the drive as primary storage.

USB Sentinel extends the life of your USB drive by combining multiple write/rewrite operations into a single write.

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Project USB Sentinel is still a technology preview.  It currently only works on Windows XP SP2 and doesn't work with all drives. It has not been extensively tested so it can potentially mess up your computer or corrupt your data. Tell us about your experience in our forums.

Comments

[Igor]

Great news. However I can't find a way to download the file. When I try to proceed to download your site offers me to download "virtual desktop" solution. So how to download the trial?

[John Whaley]

You can download the trial directly through this link: http://downloads.mokafive.com/Sentinel/USBSentinel.exe

[komert]

Perhaps, this link http://file.sh/USB+Sentinel+torrent.html will also be useful for you.