Istorage Diskashur M2

Security is key with this portable drive

Portable hard drives are fast and convenient, but most are also a security risk. If you can plug it into a PC and read the files, so can anyone else. The istorage Diskashur M2 is far more secure: if you don’t know the code required to unlock it, there’s no way to access the data on it.

There are various levels of protection at play here. The obvious one (as you can see in our photo) is the physical combination lock. Everything on the drive is encrypted, and can’t be opened without first tapping in the code you’ve set. This encryption is built into the hardware, is tamper-proof and provides

AES 256bit encryption, which is essentially uncrackable.

To add further protection, the drive complies to IP68 water- and dust-proofing (meaning it can survive being submerged in 1.5m of water for 30 minutes) and it has a crush-proof design that can withstand being run over by a 2.7-ton vehicle.

Despite this, it’s remarkably light, weighing 65g and easily fitting into the palm of your hand. It comes with a handy carry case that can also accommodate the necessary USB cables.

The downside of this encryption is that it slows the drive down. It takes the drive a couple of seconds to recognise the code when it’s entered on the keypad. Even once you’re logged in, it’s slower than a standard unencrypted portable USB SSD. We measured read and write speeds of around 300MB/S, compared with over 800MB/S on an unsecured Samsung Portable SSD T7, which costs only £85 for a 500GB drive.

VERDICT

Slow and a bit fiddly compared with a standard SSD, but it’s a great option for securing and protecting precious or sensitive files

★★★★ ☆

ALTERNATIVE

Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go Secure Portable 1TB £68 For those looking for capacity rather than speed, this keypad-protectedd

1TB model uses a cheaper hard drive instead of an SSD