Finally, a thumb drive that doesn't suck

Way back in the spring, I was shopping at Fry's and decided it was time to upgrade my 16 MB thumb drive to something more... well... 21st century. So I picked up a bargain bin 1 GB drive for $20. Not the greatest bargain, but given that I once paid $400 for 4 MB of RAM, it was hardly worth debating.

I thought I was going to like it too - it had this neat mechanism that slid the USB connector to and fro - like a cheap geeky switchblade! Well, the drive worked fine, but the plastic covering and neat mechanism were complete trash. To add insult to injury, the hoop to connect to my key hoop was too small. All in all, the thing was worthless.

That is, worthless until I broke the plastic cover off and immersed it in epoxy. Now it's the greatest thumb drive I have ever owned. Check out this horrible pic:



What is this thing you ask? Well you're seeing a semi-profile of the finished product. It's just the circuit board, the USB connector, and the electronics submerged an encased in a nice epoxy (Super Glue SY-QS complements of Home Depot).

I got the idea from some work I did for the Indian navy. We bought this ridiculously priced router that was beyond military grade - it was apocalypse grade. It will exist on this earth long after we are gone. Anyway, I digress. Upon inspection, it was just a normal router fully submerged and encased in some form of epoxy (I'm sure it was military grade epoxy).

I knew epoxy wasn't a conductor so it was worth a shot to convert my crappy Fry's drive into something useable. Well, it's now beyond useable, I actually like it a lot. It's waterproof and pretty damned rugged. So far it works just fine. I wonder how long that will last?

Now, what else can I encase in epoxy...