Customer Reviews

Kingston Data Traveler Locker+ with Encryption 8 GB USB 2.0 Hi-Speed DataTraveler  DTL+/8 GB

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I received this product because I am a bzzagent.
When I first received this drive I was pleasantly surprised by the build quality. I've used numerous drives before and for this price point, this drive surpasses them all. I like the sleeve design that Kingston used with this. The sleeve is made of a sturdy and it seems as though it will offer ample protection without the worry of losing a cap or damaging the drive when it's in your pocket. Another nice touch is a small hole in the metal sleeve that allows the LED to be seen when the drive is plugged in.


Ease of Use:

The encryption setup is extremely easy. Upon plugging the drive in a wizard appears that asks for some basic information such as your name and company and an area to enter additional contact information. This is nice in the event that the drive was lost. This information will be available to make the drive easy to return to you, but the stored data that you add to the drive remains encrypted.

The next step is setting your password. The drive enforces a secure password policy and will not allow you to use an insecure password.

Once this is setup, you have access to the storage portion of the drive. A separate drive will be mapped for the data storage. When you mount the drive from this point forward, you will be prompted for the password that you set. After 7 bad passwords you get a warning that you have 3 remaining attempts. After 10 bad passwords attempts you are prompted for a new password. After setting the new password, the data is formatted from the drive. This is another feature that goes beyond just password protecting your data. It shows that keeping your data secure was the #1 goal for Kingston with this drive.

With good security there are always tradeoffs. The chance of losing your data because you forgot your password is a very real possibility. This is easily offset by keeping your password recorded in a secure location or database. The other tradeoff in this instance is speed. I ran a read and write test on the Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ against a standard flash drive that had no encryption. Those results are as follows:

Transfer Rates for the Kingston DataTraveler Locker+

Filesize 3.55 GB

Write 9.8 MB/s
Read 22 MB/s

Transfer Rates for the comparison non-encrypted flash drive:

Write 12 MB/s
Read: 28 MB/s


Clearly there is a performance hit for this drive with the encryption. However, I feel that the trade off of security for a good price is well worth waiting a few extra seconds for a file to copy. Overall I feel like this drive is secure, well built, and easy to use. If keeping your data secure is a priority, this is a great option at a great price.

The drive is to be a hardware encrypted drive. There is a ROM (Read Only Memory) space on the drive that appears like a CD drive. This holds software for setting up the flash drive. Once you run this program, it allows you to configure a password to secure the Flash drive portion of the device. Once the drive is formatted by this program, it is now accessable to store data on. So now you remove the drive and plug it back in and you have to run the same program again, however this time the drive will ask you for your password. The software has to be able to run on your PC for this to work and I could run it on my Windows 7 PC and my MacBook Pro running OS X Snow Leopard. I was however not able to get this to work on my work PC. It would not allow the program to run on their setup of XP. Not sure why but I suspect it is either the program itself or the drive is not getting loaded. I can use my other 8 GB kingston drive without any proble so I am unsure as to why. When it did work, read access seemed fast but write access seemed a little slow. Not sure if this is due to the overhead of the encryption or not or just the memory used. I do know that it was faster than some of my older ones and slower than some of my newer one, so I think it was just the encryption overhead. The drive is not protected very well by the swinging cover. I expected it to be fairly tight to rotate but it was like a windmill, spun very easily making me very worried that it would break easily. Again this could be an isolated issue with this drive so maybe others can comment on it. Finally, while I wanted to like the drive, the encryption seemed work well but the inability for any reason to be able to access the drive on my work PC makes it worthless to me, the lack of protection from the metal cover also worries me as if it turns sideways and you catch it the USB port breaks off and you have a nice metal clip.

The Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ USB flash drive has been around since late 2009, but is still a viable solution today because of the added security that it provides. How do you carry sensitive documents around? If you like to carry them on your USB flash drive, then read more about the Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ below.

PROS:
- Easy-to-use security
- 256-bit AES hardware encryption
- Supports Windows and Mac
- Swivel design doesn't require a cap
- Good performance
- 5-year warranty

CONS:
- Price premium

USB flash drives are infinitely convenient. They get handed out at press events all the time and can also be used to recover your computer, install Windows or Linux, store documents and much more. But what if you lose a USB flash drive? Hopefully you took the time to encrypt it because otherwise, whoever finds your drive will be able to access the files and do who knows what with it. This is where the Locker+ comes in.

SECURITY
Yes, you can buy a regular USB flash drive and use software to encrypt it, but it can be painfully complex. The Locker+ makes securing the drive very easy. The drive uses hardware encryption to secure the drive, which is preferable to using software. When you first insert the Locker+ into a computer, you'll be prompted to run the setup where you select a strong password and enter contact details. The next time you insert the drive and try to access your files, you simply enter your password and voila, you have access. Simple, right?

If you don't enter the correct password, then you'll only have read access to the 16MB system partition, which shows up in Windows as a CD drive. Even if you go into Windows disk management, you can't see the hidden, encrypted partition. Once the correct password is entered, the encrypted partition appears in Windows as another drive. This is why in order to use Locker+, your computer needs to have two consecutive drive letters available. For added security, if someone tries to guess your password, it will automatically reformat the drive after the 10th failed attempt. The drive will be usable after the reformat, but the files on the drive will be gone.

PERFORMANCE
Users looking for this kind of security are probably willing to sacrifice some performance to gain security. When I initially received the Locker+, I assumed that overhead from encryption would negatively impact performance. I was pleasantly surprised when I turned out to be wrong.

I ran a sequential read/write test with CrystalDiskMark and compared the transfer rate of the Locker+ with several other USB 2.0 flash drives I had lying around. Below are the results:

Corsair Flash Voyager
Read: 34.8 MB/s
Write: 8.4 MB/s

Kingston Locker+
Read: 34.4 MB/s
Write: 11.9 MB/s

Kingston 400
Read: 30.3 MB/s
Write: 9.9 MB/s

Verbatim Store 'n' Go
Read: 28.9 MB/s
Write: 8.5 MB/s

Crucial Gizmo
Read: 20.9 MB/s
Write: 8.9 MB/s

The Locker+ had the second best read performance, by a negligible amount, and had the best write performance! So, not only was the Locker+ the most secure drive of the bunch, but also the fastest.

DURABILITY
I like the swivel design of the Locker+. The metal housing is durable and protects the drive without having to fuss with a cap. I've had a DataTraveler 400 with the same swivel design for a few years now and it's been rock solid. To top it off, the Locker+ comes with a 5-year warranty and 24/7 support.

CONCLUSION
With the Kingston DataTraveler Locker+, you no longer have to choose between convenience and security. If you know how to type in passwords, you can use the Locker+. I was also pleasantly surprised at the reasonably good read/write performance of the Locker+. If you've been meaning to secure your USB flash drive, what are you waiting for? Go get a Locker+ and be done with it.

* Review unit provided by Kingston

Recently bought this item and very unhappy with this purchase, because, in contrast to description, this device DOES NOT work under linux. Also, there is no option for this device to use it like a regular flash drive, I mean without any encryption and password that is really annoying. Will definitely send it back.

I successfully used the Data Traveller Locker+ 8 GB with Windows 7 64 Bit (both Enterprise/Ultimate and Professional) and Mac Snow Leopard 10.6.8. However, it puzzled me (and the Kingston's Support) for a while when my DTL+ would not work on my desktop but worked on my laptop (both run the same Windows 7 64 bit). On my desktop, when I ran DTL Launcher, the splash screen will appear but the PW prompt window never appeared and Windows seems to be sluggish. It turned out that DTL+ objected to having a USB drive I still had plugged in for my Windows 7 Ready Boost. DTL+ worked fine after I removed the USB ReadyBoost USB key (which is a micro USB card reader with a micro HDSC 8MB card in it). Although not yet proven, I believe that the firmware in DTL+ has a problem with some - not all - USB memory devices. So when your DTL+ appears to be stuck, for the test reason, simply remove all USB memory devices plugged into your computer (and do not forget to check the USB ports in the back of your desktop) and try again. While this doesn't help you to have to plug and unplug other USB memory devices to please DTL+ (as in my case), at least, your comment/report will help convince Kingston's engineers they need to test DTL+ better and devise a fix for this issue. Otherwise, this is a very good idea to have a hardware encrypted secure, portable devices that work interchangeably between Windows and Mac.

Updated:

Using another similar USB micro HDSC card reader (with the same micro HDSC 8GB chip), I finally proved that I had a peculiar card reader that interfered with DTL+ need to load the second drive for the secure area. My point is still the same, Kingston's engineers should fix this conflict. I have experienced no other (brand name) USB secure keys having this drive conflict issue in the same scenario.

Having recently lost a USB drive with a lot of private and personal information. I was really looking for something that could give me some confidence that if I lost my drive in the future I didn't have to worry about where my information might end up. The Kingston drive does an excellent job giving me the feeling that my data is at least secure if I lose a drive in the future. The step up and operation of the drive is very easy and the seems to work everywhere I need it to. The one big drawback is the cover on the drive, is not the best, it flips out of the way very easily and exposes the drive to potential damage. But overall I am very happy with my new drive.

I bought this USB drive to store data for my engineering business. Capacity is great. Speed is pretty good. I attempted to break into the device to test its security, and was unable to. That gave me some assurance, as doing so with most drives is pretty easy. Slim design with no cover to lose. 2 thumbs up.

HD Tune: KingstonDTLocker+ Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 9.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 23.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 21.3 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.6 ms
Burst Rate : 19.3 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 15.2%

Like the fact that the entire drive is encrypted. You can't put anything on it and accidently not have it encrypted.

My employer now requires any usb drive to be encrypted at all times. The Kingston drive makes this very simple (other programs do the same thing, but I wanted something I could recommend to colleagues). The only downside is that the program does not run automatically under Windows 7, so I have to explain how to run the built-in software. This is a "feature" of Windows 7 security and not a defect of the Kingston software.

I received the Kingston DataTraveler Locker to try out because I'm a BzzAgent. I've tried a few other "secure" flash drives with a bit of disappointment but this one met my expectations. First, I like that there is a warranty and even though I haven't needed it yet there is always support available. I'ts small and can fit pretty much anywhere which makes it perfect for my travels. I really like the swivel closure, I am known for losing caps and do not care for flash drives with no cover. What I liked the most is that I do not have to install software on every pc that I plug into. If a friend wants to share photos of out trip with me, they shouldn't have to allow me to install software on their laptop! So that was a winning feature for me. For me it's quick and easy to use so I think the price point is pretty fair. I think I will purchase a larger, maybe 32gb DataTraveler Locker from Kingston, I travel a lot and am a semi-pro photographer so I simply require a massive amount of space. Other thank that, on a girly note I'd like more color options...pink perhaps!