Overview
The first thing we found with this product was that it felt like it should be inserted upside down. The device has a swivel cover with the company logo on one side. Counter-intuitively, when you insert the device the logo has to face down. On some products this wouldn’t be an issue, the case would not allow this to happen, but this one doesn’t really prevent it. Still, it will only fit one way.
It is another product that offers both secure and non-secure storage.
Installation
Again simple and straight forward, Windows installs the necessary drivers.
Password Strength
The device only requires that the password is six characters long. It does not enforce any combinations of upper or lower case letters or numbers, but it does support combinations of these and it also supports special characters.
Encryption space
The device is roomy 8GB and shares this space between secure and non-secure areas. The actual space offered by the device was 7.45GB due to the software and user manuals onboard.
Files
Add, Remove, Delete
For the non-secure area you have the standard Windows Explorer functionalities. For the secure area the application launches its own interface. You can use this in a number of ways, it has a tree structure on the left side of the screen and the secure folder on the right. You can drag and drop from your PC or from the application itself. Dragging files from the secure area copies files but does not move them. To delete files you can either right click and use the menu option or select and press the delete key - all quite standard.
Edit
Double clicking on a file in the secure area opens it and allows you to edit in situ. The updated file automatically saves as it would in a non-secure location.
Access
Because this is a dual purpose drive, you can access it as soon as it is inserted to the PC. The secure area is accessed via the application.
If you choose to close the application window you will have to log in again via the application to view it - it locks each time on closure.
Security
We thought that this device might be interesting because of its dual functionality.
The first test was the most telling. As you would expect, a device that had just been inserted to a fresh PC reveals no secrets. But after running the recovery software we were able to recover files that had been opened and deleted from the secure area. These files had been stored in the launch bin and there they stayed, fully intact. We were not able to recover files that had not been opened from the secure area. This could be an area of concern if you were to lend the device to someone thinking they had no access your files.
The second test successfully found both files, as you would expect, and the reset function formatted the drive destroying all data.