Siemens license key question

Hi all,

Is there a way to make a normal USB stick useable by ALM to store and transfer software license keys?

I have literally hundreds of S5/S7/WinnCC/Simatic.NET etc licenses to keep track of, and would really like to be able to put them all on one thumb drive rather than keeping 20 or 30 multi-authorization disks floating around. It is also a pain in the butt to have to dig out a USB floppy every time I need to transfer a license.

Thanks.

"single licenses" - no.
"floating licenses" - yes. Works with USB flash disks.

"single licenses" will work with USB hard drives. I.e. a drive that is not recognized by the system as a "removable disk" (despite that it is removable).

Thanks Jesper.

What brought all this up is that I am making a bunch of clones with new PC627B's for a customer install, and got me thinking I really need to make an image of my laptop. I have always been told that it was very bad to try and ghost a box with Siemens license keys on it, as it could corrupt the key file, cause a solar eclipse, massive tsunamis, etc, etc.

What is the truth behind license keys? can I safely make a full Ghost image of my laptop without removing the keys?

Maybe it would be safe.
I would definitely move the licenses to a separate disk before restoring an image.

In my experiences the Ghost or Acronis image is fine with the keys. I have two 250gb hard drives for my laptop. I image one to an external drive once a month, then put the other hard drive in and write the image. In this way I travel with one drive in the laptop and one drive in the bag that is less than one month old. To elaborate, I always archive a project daily to a 16gb flash drive. So at any given time I have the work on the flash drive and a backup hard drive less than one month old. The most I can lose is a day.

It's not IF the hard drive fails, its WHEN.

(Of course you should back the keys up first.)