USB Secure Flash Drive Product Review

Sandisk Cruizer

Overview
This is the smallest (physically) device in the review. Fashionable people wouldn’t mind being seen with this on their key ring.
The Sandisk Cruizer is the first of two products in this review that offer both secure and non-secure storage.

Installation
This is simple, Windows installs the necessary drivers and you running.

Password Strength
The security policy on this device requires that you have at least six characters containing both letters and numbers. You are not forced to mix upper and lower cases, and it happily let us use test12 as a password.

Encryption space
The encrypted area does not show up in My Computer, it has its own application interface. The whole drive space is 4GB, you are offered 3.73GB storage shared between secure and non-secure areas.

Files
Add, Remove, Delete

The Sandisk Cruiser interface gives you all the drag and drop, copy/paste features you’d expect, and it also has an add files button that allows you to browse your PC to select the required file locations.
We did notice that dragging a file from the non-secure area to the vault area would only copy. The original is left in the non-secure area and has to be deleted as a separate action.

Edit
Opening files in the vault area gives you read-only access. To edit files you must copy them back to your PC or the unsecure area of the memory stick. This could be a little annoying if you are in a rush.

Access
Access to the device is the same as any USB memory stick. This device allows both secure and non-secure storage. To access the secure functionality you have to select the dedicated application and log in.
If you close the vault window you can still access it using the icon in the system tray or the application icon from the non-secure folder. You will have to re-enter the password to gain access.

Security
This device looked good under test until we noted a minor flaw. During the scanning for first test one we found the deleted file open in a folder called “to remove”. We were able to recover this file and read its whole content. We repeated this test a further two times, and on these occasions we were not able to find any deleted files, so we have to conclude that it is a secure drive but may not be efficient with its garbage collection. No other files in the secure area were visible.

There is no obvious way to reset the device back to its default settings once it has been set up. It is easy to change the password, but if you were to upgrade and want to pass it on to another user, we would want to reformat it first.

Tags reviewVerbatimsecurity policiesIntegral Secure 360USB Secure Flash DriveUSB memory sticksIntegral Crypto DualSafe StickKingston Data Traveler Vault Privacysecure portable devicesSandisk Cruizer

Show Comments