Trezor vs some random hard drive?

[photonfanatic]

What is the difference between storing your coin on a trezor, vs some random hard drive that you unplug from your computer? I currently store on a trezor, but after talking to a friend I'm beginning to wonder if it was necessary. IE, as waste of money. My buddy just have a cheap USB Hard drive enclosure, and when he installed all his wallets, he simply told them to install to that hard drive. Which he leaves unplugged from the computer, unless he's actually moving some money around for whatever reason. So it always just stays unplugged, just like my trezor.

What is the difference? Why buy a Trezor when you can do this? Hell why even go that far? Why not just use a USB flash drive that you already have lying around? And just leave it unplugged when you're not moving money around.

[ranreichman]

This is most definitely not the same. When a Trezor connects to a computer to do a transaction the private key is not readable on the computer. With a USB you can steal the private key and with it all the funds. If you're not planning on actually using the offline wallet then there's only the one-time risk of transferring to another account but for constant use that's very dangerous.

[TryNinja]

Just like said above, your private key never leaves the Trezor hardware, which means that it's impossible to get your coins stolen by a malware on your computer. They sign your transaction in the hardware and broadcast through your computer/smartphone.

While, if you use an desktop wallet and store your private keys in a file on your computer or flash drive, a simple malware can copy your files, get your password with a keylogger and steal all your coins.

From TREZOR Community Manager:

When you set up your Trezor, your seed is not communicated to the computer. In fact, no confidential information is ever sent to the computer. All calculations using the private keys are done in Trezor, and it only sends the result to the computer. That's why you don't really need to set up/use Trezor on a safe computer.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TREZOR/comments/51nt2l/is_trezor_safe_to_install_in_an_infected_computer/d7dz54s/

[photonfanatic]

Ok thank you very much that clears up a lot for me.

[Coin-Keeper]

+1 for the Trezor over ANY media that stores keys and then connects to a computer of any kind.  Also, with your Trezor, unlike normal computer media, you can create a virtually unlimited number of hidden wallets.  That allows you to have a decoy wallet to show someone small coin amounts if there is a gun to your head.  No evidence exists of any hidden wallets.  That is a great feature for serious coin collectors.

[Mike Mayor]

Use ledger/tezor and please never us a USB stick as backup. The USB stick needs to cycke power in order to retain data. After awhile it loses the data so that's a bug no to that. A hard drive and external hard drive like you say is just fine and very good security. Trezor is recommended because of ease of use and that extra bit of safety and it's small size.

[Potato Chips]

Well I'd just as well use this thread to ask a question about this forum. How do you set your avatar?

While it's not a rule, hijacking someone else's thread is still not encouraged so next time create your own thread.

Moving on to your question, you currently cannot add an avatar as it is only available for full members and up. For starters, I'll recommend you to read all the stickies here in this forum particularly on this board and on Meta.

[MintDice]

Trezor is definately more secure than a random hard drive. Check out Trezor's blog all about how their making updates to enhance their security: https://blog.trezor.io/security/home

Hope this helps