Overview
This is a slim device and, unlike others in this review, would be possible to use in closely located USB slots. This is a requirement that USB vendors and PC manufactures often forget.
It could also be quite easy to lose the end-cap on this device, because it doesn’t seem very secure.
Installation
As with most of these devices, installation is simple and straight forward. Windows installs the necessary drivers and you are in business.
Password Strength
The Safe Stick has one of the best password policies of the devices tested. It requires at least eight characters which must be a combination of upper and lower case, and include at least one digit. It won’t allow you confirm the password until the rule is met. Test1234 or Testing1 are examples of the minimum level complexity. It also allows special characters (such as Testing1!) to make passwords more secure, but they are not mandatory.
Encryption space
This is one of the smallest devices under review at just 2GB. With the preloaded documents and vault area you have just 1.80GB storage area.
Files
Add, Remove, Delete
Like the other devices, the Safe Stick opens up in a standard Windows Explorer browser and allows you all the functionality you’d expect from Windows.
Edit
Because you are using the Windows environment, editing files on the device is straight forward. It’s exactly the same as editing any other file on your PC.
Access
A great advantage of the Safe Stick is that once you enter your password, the secure file space is automatically opened so that you don’t have to navigate back to my computer to find it.
If you close the window you can still access it by clicking the icon in the system tray, this reopens the secure space but does not ask for any security details - it is treated as a normal drive once you are logged in. To secure the drive you have to choose the lock option in the device menu or remove the device from the port.
Security
This is a mountable device, so like the others in this review, our first test didn’t detect any files.
Test two correctly revealed the deleted files.
The devices has an easy to use ‘reset to factory defaults’ function, so test three was also unable to detect the files.