Corsair Memory and Super Talent Technology, two leading suppliers of various flash- and DRAM-based products, recently unveiled the new breed of encrypted flash drives. Corsair’s product can boast with fully hardware-based AES 256-bit security, whereas Super Talent’s USB drives offer unprecedented capacities along with USB 3.0 compatibility.

Corsair Flash Padlock 2 employs two security technologies for superb data protection. The first of these technologies is a user-definable personal identification number or PIN. To unlock the drive and access the data, this PIN is entered using the drive’s integrated numeric keypad. The Flash Padlock 2 cannot be accessed without correctly entering the PIN for that individual drive. The second technology used is secure 256-bit AES data encryption of the drive contents which ensures that data protection cannot be compromised by disassembling the drive to gain access to the flash ICs.

Most hardware-encrypted USB flash drives require the use of a software application to enter the password for the device. However, the Flash Padlock 2 has an integrated keypad, so no software application is necessary. Unfortunately, if the pin is lost, there is a procedure that securely erases the contents of the drive, not exactly a pleasant thing.

The Flash Padlock 2 has a capacity of 8GB and uses USB 2.0 interface, which means that no high performance should be expected. The Corsair Flash Padlock 2 is backed by a 10-year Limited Warranty.

Super Talent Technology decided to fully concentrate on performance and capacities of its SuperCrypt USB 3.0drives, but had to sacrifice absolute security for that reason. The SuperCrypt USB 3.0 drives are available in 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities and support USB 3.0 speeds. According to Super Talent, downloading a 600MB movie takes a mere 7 seconds with this new drive, which results in 85MB/s read speed.

Super Talent offers two AES encryption options, both of which include the STT encryption utility for password control: the SuperCrypt drive features 128-bit ECB encryption, while the SuperCrypt Pro features 256-bit XTS encryption for very robust security, which also requires special software that makes encryption less versatile and advanced compared to the solution from Corsair Memory.

The USB 3.0 SuperCrypt drive will be available in March from Super Talent resellers worldwide.

Tags: Corsair, Super Talent, Flash, USB