NEWS

By: G. G. Buxton Smither

Superb and secure hard drive

It's not often one waxes lyrical about something as mundane as a portable drive but this unit is rather special. Firstly, the build quality seems very high - it can take a drop onto a hard surface of a couple of metres (I found this out the hard way!); the rubberized body makes secure handling easy; and the keypad is positive in use and nicely recessed. And of course, you can now buy these drives in Solid State so they should be even more robust in the event of being dropped. The drive comes with a double USB (Y-split) cable in case using a netbook or similar device, not enough power is available from a single USB port but I've never needed to use the second connector with a PC, laptop or netbook.

Encryption is a breeze - you're not even aware of it happening. My drive connects via USB2 and transfer speeds are more than adequate - I opted for the higher (256bit) level of encryption so I can't comment on whether the 128bit version delivers a higher transfer rate. Setting up your pass-key takes less than 2 minutes (less than 1 minute unless you're a fumbler like me) and then you are ready to encrypt your files and folders. Of course, whatever you do, never forget your pass-key as recovery of data is not possible - your data are even secure against Brute Force Attack. For anyone working in sensitive areas who needs to transport digital documents, these British-designed and manufactured drives are a must. If those chaps from MI5, MI6, the MOD or the National Health Service leave their sensitive files on yet another train, provided they're written onto one of these drives and 256bit encrypted, I for one will sleep well in my bed.

Superb design, top build quality, excellent on-the-fly encryption - and now available in SSD format and larger volumes, it's a winner!

By: Mr. K. Hubbard

Brilliant

Nothing more to say, except that, apart from being brilliant, it is much smaller and far more portable than I realised.

By: Dr. Nicholas Lee

Brilliant product

This is a 5*+ award (out of a possible 5) - it is just brilliant idea. Lovely rugged rubber around it feels quality. Keypad and access very easy and works perfectly. Absolutely lovely to know that ones backup data is protected. A truly brilliant product. I have struggled with encryption for years, software encryption is a real pain. This keyboard device is just brilliantly simple yet so secure. A must for those wishing to keep their data safe on a mobile basis.

By: David

Brilliant device

A neat little drive. The square and industrial design is a matter of taste and certainly contrasts with other brands. Personally I like it. Of course, for a portable drive the real value is in it's usability, and that's where the diskG* shines!

I used to have small, cheap 1TB drives from Samsung and Toshiba and I loved them - silent, no fuss and really small. But a burglary at home, where laptops and all external data backups disappeared, drove home the need for encryption. Although I don't store anything that I wouldn't share with my friends, I did have quite a lot of documents on those drives though which would potentially make things really easy for an identity thief - Identity theft being a problem not exactly unheard of these days! And with each person currently having to manage up to a 150 user ID-password combinations, where do you keep track of all of them...? Split between paper-based and electronic locations ...Someone putting his mind to finding sensitive information and taking the time to browse through the folders on my drives and the laptops could also have found enough hints and information to greatly simplify his attempts at breaking into some of my user accounts, in particular in combination with all the paperwork that was stolen at the same time. Now, it might just be paranoia and possibly the thieves were just after the hardware to sell on. But you never know who then buys the drives and for what purpose.

Since then, I have bought a series of portable drives with hardware encryption, to be more at ease next time they get stolen.

The diskG* beats them all by lengths in terms of usability. It's actually smaller than most of the other drives with encryption, it comes with an integrated USB cable and the keypad is great. It's a simple plug&play drive, exactly like any unencrypted portable drive should be. The only difference is that you'll have to type in a password on the keypad before the drive is automatically mounted. None of the other encrypted drives I've tried keeps that simple Plug&Play use: Although they state they have hardware encryption, those drives mostly mount a normal partition + a virtual CD drive with an encryption software. You first need to wait for both drives to be accessible and then launch the encryption software (which, in some cases, also needs to be configured at first use), wait until it loads and then enter your password. The virtual drive stays there and cannot be removed. The encryption software requiring low-level system access, there have also been a few clashes with my antivirus software (resulting in corrupted files). Fiddly ..and sometimes very lengthy until you finally have access to your data.

Not so with the diskG*. It's a simple and fast operation and there is barely a delay, compared to non-encrypted Plug&Play drives. Transfer rates are comparable to unencrypted USB 2 drives, although probably very slightly slower for smaller copy jobs. Speed tends to even out over bigger jobs of tens of Gbs.

Security wise, I have to rely on expert opinions. But from what I've read, it seems the diskG* is also safer than most other drives. Although the same encryption standard is used by most manufacturers, its architecture makes it more tamper-proof in case someone extracts the drive from the casing and also because it doesn't install software on your PC, a potential entry point for hackers.

A very happy customer. Despite the fact that the diskG* is more expensive than the other models, I have since bought a second unit.

If I had to ask for one improvement, it would be the addition of a USB 3 port for faster transfer.

By: E. Danielyan

Compact, well made

If for whatever reason you require hardware-encrypted portable storage this is an excellent option - no software required and works with any OS/device that supports USB 2.0 Mass Storage. Having used Ironkeys before - where you need to run on-board software to authenticate and access the encrypted storage - I can say that diskG* is much better - you can even boot from it and there is no risk of *any* software intercepting your access code as it is entered directly into the drive.