There are plenty of reasons to own an
external hard drive. Whether as a simple backup, to free up space on
a full notebook drive, or for data portability between work and home,
a portable hard drive is the tool of choice to offload serious data
off a system hard drive. Sure, a USB flash drive on a key ring is
great for convenience, but when it comes time to move hundreds of
gigs of data, a mechanical hard drive can offer capacity like nothing
else can.
The downside of putting sensitive data
on a hard drive, and taking it out and about is that then the data is
vulnerable. While Windows 8 is password protected on bootup by
default, there is no such default level of protection on an external
drive. Those hundreds of gigs of data, now can be accessed by anyone
that finds such a drive forgotten at the local Starbucks. That
external drive is now becoming somewhat less attractive.
However, there is a solution that
allows one to have the cake and eat it too. Apricorn makes a whole
line of products that offer portable capacity that is encrypted, and
protected. Today, we look at the Apricorn Aegis Bio – USB 3.0.
This device is available in a range of
sizes at different price points:
- 500 GB - $199
- 750 GB - $219
- 1 TB - $249
All the drives in this series are
encrypted at 256 bits. This is military grade encryption, that fits
the requirements of governments for “Top Secret” documents.
While any encryption scheme can be theoretically broken, we are
talking about 1.1 x 1077 combinations of passwords, that
is estimated via a brute force attack for a computer to take 3.31 x
1056 years to break. Let’s just say that no one is getting into one of these drives anytime soon is an understatement.
The drive ships with the Aegis Bio –
USB 3.0 which has the hard drive preinstalled. It is a black plastic
case, and it has an integrated USB cable (19mm X 84.5mm X 120mm
(0.75” X 3.3” X 4.7”) Weight: 6.2oz). It has the blue
connection and can work both with a USB 3.0, and is backwards
compatible with USB 2.0 (but you’ll want to plug it into the newer
slot when you can- more on that a little later). The box also ships
with some accessories, including a USB Y-connector, and a nylon case.
The Y-connector is useful if your USB port does not provide enough
power, you can up the juice by plugging it into 2 USB ports
simultaneously. The case has some padding, closes with Velcro, and
is made of nylon. It looks durable and slick, and is a step up from
what these types of drives have shipped with previously.
The Aegis Bio – USB 3.0 has its
encryption based on fingerprint password protection. Up to 5 fingers
can be enrolled, which means that the device has scanned them by
swiping the finger across the biometric sensor. This insures that
the device can only be unlocked by the owner. Even if the case is
cracked open, and the drive is mounted in another reader, the drive
is still encrypted, and you can start guessing for the next billion
years or so. Whenever the drive is unplugged from the USB port, it
automatically locks again, making sure only the owner can get into
this thing. Another feature is that the drive needs no software
installed on the PC, aka: no “administrator rights” are required.
This also means that is can work with any OS- including Windows, Mac
or Linux.
The innards of this include a Toshiba
MQ01ABD100, which is a 2.5 inch notebook hard drive, and uses a SATA
3 GB/s interface internally. It has a slim height of 9.5 mm which
allows the case to remain at a svelte size. It spins at a pedestrian
5,400 rpm, has a 12 ms average seek time reported and has 8 mb of
internal buffer memory. The usual “format shrink” applies, with
the 750 GB capacity coming up at 697 GB, which was the capacity
tested.
The speeds were tested using HDTune.
The results are reported below, along with my notebook’s system
drive for comparison. Testing was done with a Lenovo notebook,
running Windows 8, with 4 GB of RAM, and an Intel Core i3-3217U chip.
Of course, all other processes were shut off for testing so the
notebook could give this its undivided attention. Speeds reported
are the average read speeds.
- Aegis Bio on USB 2.0: 28.9 mb/sec
- Aegis Bio on USB 3.0: 84.4 mb/sec
- Western Digital 500 Gb system drive (SATA): 79.9 mb/sec
Looking at the speeds, the USB 3.0 was
the clear winner here. I was quite surprised that it exceeded the
speeds of the SATA drive, and was almost 3 times faster on USB 3.0
over the more ubiquitous USB 2.0 interface. When moving serious
amounts of data, which the capacities of the Aegis Bio – USB 3.0
can handle, the faster USB 3.0 interface is clearly the port to be
attached to, and should make a more than noticeable difference in
speeds. Thankfully, most new computers these days are shipping with
at least one USB 3.0 port.
Overall, the Aegis Bio- USB 3.0 is a
useful device. It performed stably in testing, across a variety of
Windows computers. When transferring truckloads of data, the Aegis
Bio – USB 3.0 can be counted upon to keep it all secure. It is
backed by a 3 year limited warranty.
Reviewed by Jonas
Overall Grade: A
Overall Grade: A
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