Patent ID: 8239690

Claim:
A storage device that can be attached and/or detached to and/or from an information-processing device, the storage device comprising: storage means including a first area provided to store an encryption key used to encode first information and first authentication information used to perform authentication, and a second area provided to store second information encoded by the information-processing device by using the encryption key; authentication means configured to authenticate a user based on second authentication information generated by the information-processing device based on third information input by the user and the first authentication information stored in the first area; transmission means configured to transmit the encryption key stored in the first area to the information-processing device when validity of the user is confirmed through the authentication; and control means configured to have control over writing and/or reading the encoded second information into and/or from the second area, and further wherein the storage device has a common bus which transfers data to and from a flash memory controller that controls a flash memory portioned into a plurality of regions including a first region where access can be made only from at least one selected application program and at least one second region where access can be made only from an operating system and at least one third region that is accessible via the common bus without restriction.