Customer Reviews

4GB Jumpdrive Secure II Plus JDSEP4GB-431

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In the past, I've always stuck with SanDisk for flash media. For SD cards, I still do. But I saw this Lexar drive on sale locally the other day and had pick one up. The big draws were name recognition, large storage capacity at a low price, built in security/encryption and that neat little gauge that tells you how much room you have left (which reminded me of those old batteries that had the power gauge on them). Oh yeah, and none of that U3 crap installed, either. That's definitely a good thing!

Anyway, I've been more than impressed. The only real flaw I've noticed is that a keyring/lanyard hole is on the cap. What that means is, lose the cap, lose your drive. But since this drive is plastic, I don't plan on keeping it on my keyring anyway. I'll opt to keep it in my bag most of the time for now.

The storage gauge is actually pretty neat. Nowhere on the packaging does it specify if this works while the drive is not plugged in or not, so I was assuming it would only display when plugged in. Luckily, I was wrong. This digital gauge displays all the time, so you can always know roughly how much room you have available. Of course, when you have a 4GB drive, and there's only 10 "bars" on the gauge, each bar represents roughly 200MB of space, so it's not accurate by any means. But it is still pretty neat, I have to admit.

A real big plus I've noticed is that the Portable Applications I use on this drive (Firefox, OpenOffice, Pidgin, GIMP, etc) load and run A LOT faster than on my previous flash drives. That's proof enough to me that this drive is pretty fast when compared to my past drives.

The included security software is decent, too. It allows you to create encrypted "vaults" that serve as separate drives. If you've ever used TrueCrypt or a similar program, it's very much like that: you create a "vault" (which is just a file) in which to put other files into. You specify a size for the "vault," set a password, and then it opens as a separate drive letter which you can move files over to like anything else. When you first put in this flash drive, you can set the software to automatically pop up and let you find your "vaults" to load/mount. Just enter your password and they'll open up for you to access. Easy as that. It adds an extra step or two between you and your files, but it's completely optional, and a good thing to utilize if you have documents or programs that might contain personal information (such as running Firefox Portable with saved passwords; Thunderbird Portable with your emails; or Word/Excel docs with phone numbers, credit card numbers, etc; for example).

It could be smaller, but for the price, speed, and extra features, it's not really a big deal.

So far, no major complaints.

The Jumpdrive Secure II Plus has a lot of nice features to it, but I had some initial problems with it.

SOFTWARE
When you plug the drive into your computer, nothing really happens--it didn't autoload any software. Like any USB stick, you can just drag and drop files onto it. However, if you want to use the security features, there are a couple of folders that you dig through to double click the SecureII program. This takes a few seconds and loads the Secure program into your taskbar for easy access. The program window is small, and lets you encrypt files individually, or create password protected Vaults (folders) to store multiple sensitive files. When you create a new Vault (it takes several minutes to create large ones), you must then input the password and mount it as a separate virtual drive under My Computer. From this newly mounted drive files can be dragged, dropped and automatically encrypted. Exiting the program "logs out" and unmounts the virtual drive so the USB stick can be removed. The interface is pretty simple. You can also "shred" files when you are done with them using the program window. The software is part of the USB stick, so it's always on there no matter what computer you try to access your data through.

HARDWARE
The actual device feels solid. The cap stays on tight and has a little hole on the top if you wanted to feed a piece of string through it as lanyard (not included). The LED display on the outside is a nice touch to keep track of how much space is free on the drive, but it's not really necessary and the warranty on the display only lasts a year. Note that when you create a 4GB Vault, but only load 1GB of data in there, it still appears as if you used 4GB because the Vault "container" still physically takes up 4GB space on the USB stick. But that extra 3GB of unused space is still available when you enter the password and mount the drive.

PROBLEMS/SHORTCOMINGS
I had a couple problems with the Jumpdrive Secure II Plus. First, it "works" with Vista, but for me I had complications. When I bought the device, I was able to use it as a normal USB drive to drag and drop files onto it and I could encrypt individual files. However, I was unable to create a password protected Vault because the software said I needed to be logged in as an Administrator. I was logged in as an Administrator on both Vista Home Premium and Vista Business computers and it did not work. I was going to return the drive, but I tried it on a Windows XP Pro machine first. Here I was finally able to create a Vault. Once that first password protected Vault was created, I could could go back to my Vista computers, enter the password, and drag files into it. Additionally, I could now create new Vaults with my Vista computers and use the device as originally intended. I have no idea why is this the case, but it was highly annoying.

One other thing to note is that Jumpdrive Secure II uses FAT32 as it's partition format, and as a result, you can only create Vaults that are 32MB to 4GB in size. You can create multiple Vaults on the drive, but they all have that size restriction. Not a deal breaker to me because I can separate out my files, but it would be nice to put everything into one Vault folder.

SUMMARY
Overall, after the initial Vista problem the Jumpdrive Secure II Plus does what I want it to do at a relatively affordable price. Lots of other password protecting USB sticks cost much more per GB. I don't know if my Vista problem is a unique one, or if your Vista machine will encounter the same troubles, but it is something to be wary of and prevents a 5-star rating.

(P.S. If you found this review helpful please click "yes" below so more people can read it; I place a lot of weight on thorough Amazon customer reviews when I purchase products too. Thanks.)

Two version of encryption softwares were included in the Jumpdrive, one for Mac and the other for PC. You can encrypted your file / partition in Mac and access it from PC and vice versa. The only limitation is that the PC version of encryption software need to run in user logged in with adequate permission. If your level of permission is not enough, you can only access the non-encrypted part.

I called the tech support and was informed that the encrypted vault feature won't work with vista 64 bit. Check here for when this will become available. No dates as of 1.12.2009. I did not see this limitation when I purchased the drive. This feature is why I bought it.

For using the encryption software Lexar secureII you must have administrator credential on the PC
And you have to run the application as administrator otherwise the main function (encrypt vault) is disable
Very annoying popup error message at each launch
You can buy a regular flash memory, twice big as this size with the same price or even less, download a reliable open source program (free) from truecrypt.org and have a much better protection with no hassle !

Why I bought it (pros): Capacity, price, 256 bit encryption (I encrypt the whole unit), no U3 app, form factor.

Annoyances: lanyard connection is on cap not device, usage meter is cheesy (displays full if entire drive is encrypted, which is fine), no 64-bit support for the Encrypted Vault, one of my main reasons for purchasing it (I tried it on XP 64, Vista 64, and 2008 64). Bummer, could have been a much better unit. Hopefully Lexar releases an update. Still usable so I'll put it to work while I have some 32-bit systems around but am looking for a replacement.

I had the product two months now. It works and works great but it's not durable. I use it everyday to work between three computers. About two weeks ago the cap started to crack, then it started to crack around the USB plug in, today a chunk of plastic fell off around the USB Plug-in exposing the green circuit board as I unpluged it from the computer. I called Lexar they are replacing it however, I will be using it to back up pictures and video on my home computer. The Sandisk Cruzer is must better on wear and tear.

This drive has an amazing amount of storage for the price, and a fill meter besides. Only drawback is keychain hole is in cap, too easy to lose.

Nice portable memory, but design is a bit flawed. The USB connector can break, rendering all information inaccessible. Lexar was good enough to cover replacement under warranty, but worried that same thing will happen in the future. After warranty period, then what?

I have had my Lexar 4GB jump drive for about two months, and the usb connector is now loose. I have ordered a replacement of another brand, because I see where this has happened to someone else, and I no longer trust the Lexar brand.