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Installation
As long as you familiarize yourself with its
hardware locking feature, installation is a breeze and no different than any
other standard flash drive. Windows Vista identifies it properly under
Disk Drives and this is yet another flash drive that does meet the
requirements to support ReadyBoost.
However, once you follow the instructions and
set your password, you must treat it just like you would any other
hardware-based security storage device. Check out our review on the
excellent Silverstone TS01B for another
excellent example. To give you a better idea of how this flash drive
works, I created a video to demonstrate both its locking and unlocking
features...
video clip
**click to play**
As
demonstrated in this video clip, the Corsair Padlock sports a couple of
self-powered status LED's to provide you with its current state. When
attempting to connect the flash drive to your PC without unlocking it first,
the lock LED will blink red and you will not be able to gain access to it.
Once you successfully enter you passcode, the unlock LED will blink
green and while on this state, you can connect it to your computer and
access your data. Also, as demonstrated in the video above, even if
you successfully unlock the drive, it will eventually go back to a "locked"
state. This basically demonstrates it excellent auto-locking feature.
Performance
OK,
so its security features are nice but does it really perform like a Corsair
drive should? The extensive tests below should answer this question...
The
excellent and ultra-tiny PQI i810 was thrown into the mix as a comparison.
Performance Results - SANDRA 2008
Starting with the "Combined Index", these results are based on standard file
operations typical with these storage devices. This consists of writing to
the drive, reading from it and then finally deleting it from the flash drive
itself. The results, based on a set number of file sizes, will give you the
Combined Index, all of which are based on operations per minute.
The other main "score" SANDRA will provide you with is the drive's
"Endurance Factor". While skeptical to many, including myself, these tests
basically represent the wear and life expectancy of a flash drive. How?
Well, the results are based by dividing the drive's average performance over
the lowest performance. I will not get anymore technical, but when you
research this heavily, the whole logic behind it does actually make sense
and like all products, they are prone to malfunction. While many rely on
flash media as a means of achieving the highest reliability, the truth is
that even these products are prone to "wear and tear" and while extremely
rare, they are still capable of complete malfunction after excessive use.
In the SANDRA tests, we see that the Padlock is clearly in a level of its
own when it comes to its Combined Index. However, its Endurance Factor
was surprisingly much lower than the i810 in comparison.
Performance Results - HD Tune
The next set of tests I like to perform are
with HD Tune. For those unfamiliar with this small yet practical utility, it
is a tool primarily designed to measure hard disk performance. However, you
can use it with removable storage devices as well to get a better indication
as to how the drive performs. What's nice about this tool is that it is
similar to Nero's CD-DVD Speed in the sense that it will provide you with a
clear look at how the disk "behaves" during the entire testing process.
However, based on a number of tests with a variety of flash drives, I found
the results to be misleading in terms of "actual" performance results.
Regardless, this utility is good to capture transfer rates from beginning to
end and see if it is able to perform according to specification.
As expected, the results here were much more
credible. The Corsair Padlock starts with a high transfer speed of
just over 29MB/s before reaching its maximum transfer rate of just over
33MB/s. Based on the average of rought 31MB/s, these results are
fairly close to the specifications I've had to research and gather online.
Actual Performance Results
Synthetic benchmarks are one thing and despite
how impressive this tiny drive managed to perform, it is actual performance
that will confirm all results above. With that said, there is one particular
tool I consistently use for storage device reviews that will provide you
with the most accurate results possible. These tests are always done with
the excellent DiskBench Utility. Once again, for those who are unfamiliar
with this application, DiskBench is a utility designed to measure real life
transfer rates. Unlike synthetic benchmark utilities, this application will
allow you to create an image file of a user specified size and allow you to
transfer to and from the device you are testing in order to capture
real-time read/write transfer rates and times. Other than running these
tests on your own without the aid of any tools, it is simply the most
accurate utility to capture reliable read/write times of any storage
product.
Flash drives always seem to surprise me. The Corsair Padlock happens
to be one of these and the results here were also a shocker. Against
the ultra tiny but fast PQI i810, the Padlock struggled to keep up and its
write times (in seconds) were much higher in comparison.
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