Kingston DataTraveler 2000 Review

USB pen drives are available in all styles and sizes, but there’s little or no else differentiating them. Some may promise high capacities or rugged bodies, and others would possibly have multiple connectors to paintings with PCs and smartphones. Very few certainly offer any features that others do not. Kingston has diagnosed as a minimum one area of interest in the marketplace that regular commodity pen drives are not excellent enough for – excessive protection records garage and transportation.

If you cope with sensitive information all the time and cannot hazard having a portable storage device misplaced or stolen, encryption is your great wager. Kingston’s DataTraveler 2000 is among numerous models that Kingston sells proposing hardware encryption, but the simplest one with its bodily keypad that makes it unbiased of host structures. One look at it, and it will likely be clear that this is not your regular USB force, but do you need this type of? We’ll help you make a decision.

Kingston DataTraveler

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Kingston DataTraveler 2000 layout

If the electric blue coloring and the buttons at the front of the DataTraveler 2000 do not snatch your interest, its sheer length will. It’s giant through pen drive standards, measuring 8cm long and 2cm wide. Thankfully, the body is long and slim, so it shouldn’t block neighboring ports on maximum PCs. You get the drive and a removable steel cap that covers the whole frame, not just the USB connector. There’s a rubber flange that is probably intended to preserve liquids from adverse effects of the tool’s electronics. It’s rated IP57 for water and dirt resistance, though Kingston does not mention this anywhere on the packaging.

Both the cap and the drive itself are steel, even though the industry has a rubbery end, which seems like it will sooner or later peel off. Getting the lid off is a piece of a struggle as the seal is simply tight. It would help if you hooked a finger into the steel ring at the top of the power, so we would propose opposing taking that off. We generally do not like removable caps because they’re too easy to lose; however, this one should not be a problem, given its length and pleasing color.

On the front of the power is the keypad, with ten alphanumeric keys and others with a key icon. The buttons are tiny, but they may be properly spaced and require firm presses, so there may be a little hazard of creating errors. There are pink and green LEDs with lock and liberate icons on the top of the keypad and another unmarked blue one at the lowest.

Kingston DataTraveler 2000 setup and utilization

There’s a lithium polymer battery within the DataTraveler 2000. Kingston advises buyers to plug the pressure into a USB port for at least an hour before starting to use it to allow the battery to price. This is because the force is essentially a tiny self-contained computer with its microprocessor, and you use the keypad to unlock and manage it without it being plugged in. Kingston doesn’t specify how long the 40mAh battery will live charged, but it must pinnacle itself up each time the force is plugged into a PC. If it does die out, you will want to plug it in once earlier than you could free up it, but your records won’t be affected.

The pictographic guide of the bubble percent is unclear, and the focus is protected most effectively as a tender reproduction of the force itself. Hence, it is clear to overlook the battery charging step. Unfortunately, it is also not clear in any respect what the flashing LEDs mean until you read the manual (or even then, it’d be a pain to memorize every notification sequence). We wound up checking Kingston’s internet site for extra helpful commands and simply downloading a copy of the manual from there.

To use the DataTraveler 2000, press the Key button, click for your passcode, and press the Key button again. The crimson LED will flash at some point in this system, and then a 2d or when you’re finished with urgent buttons, the inexperienced one will light up and live strong. At that point, you’ve got 30 seconds to plug the power in on your PC, and it will then work like all regular storage devices. The second you pull it out of a USB port, or if you pull down the Key button for 3 seconds, it will arm itself again.

The default passcode is 11223344, printed in the guide and at the return of the DataTraveler 2000’s retail package. It’s glaringly commonplace to all devices offered and must be modified immediately, or you are defeating the reason for purchasing one. This calls for a dip into the user guide because all administration is finished at the tool itself, the usage of the buttons for input, and LEDs to decipher what’s occurring. Passcodes need to be between 7 and 11 characters long.

Apart from converting the passcode, you could transfer between read-only and read-write modes, set a timeout lock to further growth protection, and reset the encryption key (so that you can wipe out all data). The DataTraveler 2000 will reset after ten unsuccessful passcode guesses to prevent brute-force attacks. One obvious shortcoming is that there may be no way to remotely song, wipe out, or manage access to a DataTraveler 2000 power. It’s additionally not something that can be deployed across a group of workers as it’s unreasonable to anticipate occasional, non-technical customers to examine the collection of button presses had to do things like wipe the drive or trade its passcode. The human using it is the most important capability point of failure in safety phrases.

Kingston DataTraveler 2000 specifications and performance

This is a USB 3.1 (Gen 1) pressure and must be had handiest in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities. It makes use of 256-bit AES encryption. Because all encryption is handled by the tool itself, there’s no want for any motive force or software, and there is no barrier to working device compatibility. You don’t need to install a separate encrypted partition as you do with some password-blanketed USB devices. If you’re strolling Windows Vista SP2, macOS 10.8, or any Linux distribution with kernel 2.6 or later, the DataTraveler 2000 will include paintings. It should additionally paint on Android and ChromeOS devices that assist USB mass garage. We had no hassle using the drive on multiple Windows 10 PCs and a MacBook Air walking macOS Sierra.

When you disarm the force, the usage of your passcode appears on your host system like some other USB garage device. The encryption is transparent. You are blanketed from keyloggers, and brute pressure decryption tries on a compromised host PC. The tradeoff for that is that if you ever overlook the passcode, there may be no manner to get better via software program, considering your PC might not even locate something plugged in. The handiest thing you’ll be capable of doing is to reset the pressure and start from scratch.

We measured performance with the use of CrystalDiskMark on Windows 10. The top sequential study and write speeds have been 154.4MBps and ninety-two.07MBps, respectively, while random read and write speeds had been miles lower, 7.64MBps and five.29MBps. This massive variance shows that the DataTraveler 2000 might not be very rapid regarding real-world utilization. Considering the charge you’re paying, a USB SSD would deliver appreciably better results and almost ten times as good deal capability.

Verdict

Who is the DataTraveler 2000 surely for? It’s extremely high priced and appears to be overkill for casual users, even the ones involved about leaving touchy statistics lying around. Software encryption has to be excellent and sufficient for the general public. Considering the laundry listing of American and European facts, safety requirements, and legal guidelines Kingston cites on its internet site, it is apparent that this product is intended for those in excessive-security government positions or people who address regulation enforcement, intellectual assets, studies facts, or clinical records. Stringent legal guidelines apply in many fields, and in times of susceptible points, leaks pop up in the information alarmingly often. Given the range of excessive-profile breaches to online offerings recorded every 12 months, a few might favor moving their files offline. On the other hand, Kingston desires to defend human beings in opposition to legal responsibility that might damage a business. For a few, the price of those drives could be some distance, much less than the ability fee of now not having them.