How to Backup up hardware key

If you have a industrial software which uses hardware key to authenticate the license, then it is very difficult to run the software without the key dongle plugged in. Their is a chance that the key might be stolen as it looks just like pen drive. If the key dongle is stolen, then the software will not run and you have to buy another license key dongle if  you are not under service contract.

In this article I'll describe you with the method by which you can backup your hardware dongle to enable you to run the software without the key dongle plugged in.

Note: All the steps has to be done while the dongle is plugged in and the application is running.

Step 1. Download Sentinel key reader Dumper.exe. This is used to dump the key file in the dongle which is otherwise impossible to read.

Note: This can only be used with Sentinel SuperPro/UltraPro keys. The best way to find whether your key is Sentinel is that when you run the application dumper.exe, it will not show the message as "Safenet dongle drivers are not installed".

Step 2. Open dumper.exe. Click on Dump as shown in figure. It will save a dump file in .bin format.

Step 3. Now Download Bin2Dng. It will converts .bin file generated in previous step to .dng format.



Step 4.  Open Bin2Dng.exe. Goto Sentinel tab and do as instructed in the figure.

Step 5. After properly doing all above steps .dng file is generated. Now download SentinelEmulator. This will emulate the .dng file as if the dongle is Plugged in the USB drive.

Step 6.  Do as instructed in the figures.

Step 7. After all the steps has been done, remove the dongle and restart the application that uses the dongle to verify itself. You will see, it did not required the dongle and still running.

 You can keep the dongle safe somewhere or use it to run the application in another PC.