Following the lead of SanDisk with its First Encrypted USB Stick for Apple’s Mac OS X, Kingston’s Privacy Edition of their popular usb drive series “Kingston DataTraveler” is now also available as an out-of-the box encrypted flash drive for Apple’s Mac OS X.
This marks a big step for the growing Mac community and is certainly welcome by Windows users who want to make sure they are not bound to accessing their encrypted data on Windows machines only.
The devices look stylish, allow for great data transfer rates of 24MB/s read and 10MB/s write access, and are equipped with industry-standard full AES 256bit encryption, completely assembled in the USA.
The best thing, however, is the fact that it feels and works just like a regular USB stick. No installation is required as the encryption logic sits on an extra controller right inside the flash drive, making life extremely easy for the users. We were very happy with the overall performance and ease-of-use!
Something we also like very much is the price! While encrypted USB drives are still targeted to the corporate world and are thus very pricey, the Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy Edition is the first full disk encrypted flash drive that is actually affordable while it also supports both Windows and Mac OS X.
After browsing some of the big retailers we found a 2 GB drive for as low as $66.67 on Buy.com, the next cheapest was $112.99 on TheNerds.net for 4GB, and the 8 GB version is currently on sale at Buy.com and would cost you $177.99 instead of $299.99 (8 GB).
The verdict: USB sticks are great for their size, ease-of-use and practicallity. However, they always come with a high risk of data theft as they are quickly lost and easily stolen.
If you carry data on a flash drive you do not want to end up in the wrong hands, then you have to make sure it’s encrypted. The Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy Edition is a good choice to accomplish just that. It offers you great performance and cross-platform support at a fair price.
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[...] May 20th: Kingston has now joined the leagues of USB Encryption for Mac OS X. The Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy Edition with 2 GB of storage are currently priced at [...]