Super Talent ST3U32DGS DataGuardian 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Supertalent are an established manufacturer of flash based products. This is a well made and thought out product. It initially appears as a cd drive and on entering the password (which is held on the flash device and processed on the flash device) it creates a new flash disc device which can be written to. Read and write speeds are adequate, with crystaldiskmark (a tough test) showing reads in the 36MB/s zone and writes in the 29MB/s zone. This is about double the speed of usb2 flash sticks in my experience, but still pretty pretty slow if you are copying large amounts of data. You do have the critical benefit that the data written is encrypted and can only be accessed by someone who knows the password. It is tempting to use this device as the main store and working drive for confidential material. There are some things to consider if doing this. Firstly, flash drives are not archival media, so could potentially lose data. You should always have an archive of the data somewhere else. Secondly, it is very easy to remove the stick from a computer. Even if your data is safe your working files will have been taken. In summary, this is a neat idea, well executed, just don't rely on this alone for storage of your confidential material.