iStorage diskAshur2 PIN Authenticated 2TB USB HDD Review

Bohs Hansen / 7 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

As you might have guessed, the iStorage dishAshur2 (Product link) isn’t the cheapest drive available. Considering all the security features, that’s a given. At the time of writing this article, the drive can be yours for £288.90 or $349 through Amazon. There, you can pick another colour, capacity, or an SSD variant instead.

Final Thoughts

I could keep it as short as saying: If you want true security for your files, get an iStorage diskAshur2 drive. The amount of security the company baked into this drive is incredible. It robust, light, and portable, yet it’s tamper proof and evident, protects from brute-force and hacking attempts, and encrypts everything with a hardware encryption engine. That doesn’t leave a whole lot for anyone to attack. For anyone in the EU, it’s also worth noting that it is fully GDPR compliant.

Performance

The performance is as you would expect it from a 2.5-inch hard disk drive. We come in slightly above 100MB/s with about 120MB/s performance. For a drive this size, that’s actually not bad. We’re not breaking any speed records, but we aren’t seeing a speed reduction either. All the security features and functions don’t have any impact on our performance as everything is hardware powered.

Look and Design

The drive also looks and feels great. The surface is soft to touch, yet it doesn’t attract every dust particle in the area. The keypad is extra resistant which means that you won’t give away your pin by worn-down keys. Speaking of the pin, with the options from 7 to 15 digits and a maximum of 15 false tries makes it impossible to break.

Bonus Software

As a bonus, iStorage included keys for the Nero BackItUp and iStorage DriveSecurity software.

PIN Input and Change

After about 10 unlocks, your fingers will just glide over the pad, unlocking the drive as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Changing the PIN requires a few more steps, but it’s very easy too. You can even add an extra user besides the admin. A great bonus is that everything is possible directly on the drive and that it doesn’t require any software.

A Small Issue for Some People

There is one small problem for some users with this drive. Windows 8 and Windows 10 have an issue with USB power suspension which causes the drive to lose connection all the time. There is a fix, but it is one that you have to execute manually. The company does provide a detailed instruction on how to do so online. A suggestion to iStorage would be to include a leaflet with the instruction until a more permanent fix has been rolled out. This isn’t an issue with the drive as such, it’s a Windows issue which Microsoft needs to fix. It applies to all USB devices, but it’s only noticeable on a device like this which will lock itself by design when disconnected.

Pros

Best security options available
Fully government compliant
Plenty of capacity options
No performance impact from the security features

Cons

Win8/Win10 users will have to patch the USB suspend issue manually until Microsoft makes a permanent fix.

“iStorage packs just about every security feature and function available into a single drive and they call it the diskAshur2. It doesn’t get much better!”