Spacious, secure, sturdy

USB capacity wars are raging hot. Now memory giant Kingston has upped the ante, introducing the 8 GB DataTraveler Secure Privacy Edition.

The drive is dark grey with black rubber piping for grip; it will weather dusty Indian conditions with ease. The cap fits snugly—no surprise, since the drive is supposed to be waterproof up to a depth of 4 metres. It comes with a detachable mini lanyard (the threaded string) to be fastened to a key-ring, but Kingston does not provide a key ring or anchor.

This is essentially a high-speed Flash drive for the extremely security-conscious; this is evident when you plug it in for the first time. You are greeted with a screen where you set a username, password, and password reminder hint. Kingston seems to be a little too paranoid here: only after setting a very “strong” (as in complex) password can you access the drive.

The DataTraveler supports 256-bit AES encryption on the fly, that is, data is encrypted as it is being transferred to the drive. Considering this, the drive is quite speedy in its class of drives. When we tested it, it took just 57 seconds to write a 700 MB sequential file to the drive, and a much lower 30 seconds to read the same file from the drive. Assorted files of the same capacity take much longer, though: over 2:30 minutes to write to the drive while reading them takes 1:15 minutes.

You’ll find Windows’ Vista ReadyBoost feature supported; this lets the OS use the drive as cache or virtual memory to enhance system performance.

In case you’re toally taken in by the 8 GB figure, bear in mind that the drive only supports FAT32, thereby limiting the maximum individual file size to 4 GB. This means you can’t carry around files such as DVD images, which are generally larger.

Price? A premium Rs 12,000. We’d suggest waiting for a few months; it is probably too early to buy this one.

Specifications
Capacity: 8 GB; Interface: USB 2.0; Password protection; Lanyard

RATINGS
Performance  : 4
Features : 4.5
Ease of Use : 4.5
Value for Money : 2
Overall : 3.5

Contact : Kingston India Pvt. Ltd.
Phone : 1800-425-4515   
E-mail : techsupport_india@kingston.com
Web site : www.kingston.com
Price : Rs 12,000