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Secure & Encrypted: The Secure Drive KP Reviewed
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Jun 22, 2024
Do you work with confidential data? Do you mail hard drives or hand them to colleagues for projects, never wondering what would happen if it got lost or stolen? Secure Data has a great solution for all these situations with the Secure Drive KP. A simple numeric keypad on the hardware encrypted drive keeps out everyone but authorized users. And it's easy to work with... Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ plugged a Secure Drive KP into his MacBook to find out how it worked. His conclusion: It's fantastic. Watch to find out what makes this such a cool - and simple - solution to your data privacy needs. Learn more at https://www.SecureDrive.com/
View Video Transcript
0:00
A hard drive with a pin code? Let's check this out
0:03
Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at security again
0:13
This time I'm looking at this. This is the SecureDrive KP, KP for keypad, from SecureData
0:20
And I think it's really cool. As you can see, quite obviously, it has a numeric keypad
0:27
And it's like a pin code on an ATM, right? So, you plug this into a computer and unless you know the right code
0:34
you'll never get onto this drive. You'll never read the data. You'll never have access. Period
0:39
So, it is actually built with hardware encryption built into the drive
0:45
So, it has AES 256-bit XTS encryption. And it validates at FIPS 142 level 3
0:54
Which means that you can give this directly to a bad guy. And they'll never actually succeed at getting anything off of it
1:00
Even if they tried to tear the drive apart, this is all baked into the hardware
1:04
So, really, really secure. Now, let's actually give it a whirl, right
1:09
Because it's all well and good to talk about it. But what's it like in practice
1:13
So, comes with the drive and the necessary cable. That's pretty straightforward
1:19
So, plug the cable in. And I need an adapter because it unfortunately does not have USB-C as an option
1:26
It only has USB-3. So, I'll plug it in. Oh, and by the way, this is an SSD drive
1:33
It's a solid state drive. So, it's nice and fast. But, here we are
1:37
And I plugged it into my computer. And I get nothing. Nothing shows up
1:42
Nothing's happening here. And that's exactly how you want it to be. Because I haven't entered the code
1:47
What's happening is that if you can see here, if we can get it to stay plugged in
1:52
there's a little red lock light here on the top of the actual drive itself
1:58
So, now what I'm going to need to do is I'm going to need to unlock it. Now, I will tell you
2:03
I'm having some problems with the connection here. I will tell you that the code on this drive right now is the default. 11223344
2:12
Not super secure. You can change it. And, of course, you should
2:16
But we're just going to leave it like that. And if you watch, let me move my computer out of the way here
2:21
Watch how I unlock it. So, push a button. 11223344. And then unlock
2:30
And it takes a second or two. And now it's unlocked. And, with any luck, it shows up on my Macintosh desktop
2:40
So, now let's actually give it a little bit of a test and see how it works
2:45
So, I'm going to swing around and let you see what's on my screen. So, hang on just a sec
2:50
All right. So, you can see Secure Drive is on the desktop. Let's go ahead and open it up
2:55
And now the first thing I'm going to do is I'm actually going to drag a 3GB folder onto the desktop
3:01
So, that will be actually a write from the drive onto my internal drive
3:06
So, let's see how long that takes. And we get a progress bar
3:10
There we go. So, it's going to take about a minute to write 3GB
3:15
Actually, I think it will take less than a minute. So, we'll let that proceed because this is basically as exciting as watching paint dry on a wall
3:24
But this is really, really important stuff. Now, again, remember, there's hardware encryption going on here
3:31
So, what's happening is it's not only reading off of a super fast SSD or solid state drive, but it's then having to do some encryption decryption
3:40
So, it's not maximum possible performance. But that's not what we're looking for here
3:44
We're looking for secure performance. So, the good news is that's exactly what we're getting here
3:49
So, looks like it's almost done. We'll give it a couple more seconds
3:54
You can see we've already got 2GB. So, 3GB in a minute
4:00
You can figure out that speed there. And then what we'll do is we're going to reverse the process
4:05
I have another folder that's on the desktop that's 2.2GB. And I'm going to drag that onto the secure drive KP
4:14
And we'll see how long that takes. So, let's see. Five seconds
4:19
And hopefully, we'll be done momentarily. Done. Good. Now, let's copy this 2GB file onto the drive
4:27
And write is always slower than read. So, let's see how long this takes
4:32
Okay. So, now, again, it's saying it's going to take about a minute. And, again, I'm a little suspicious that it's going to actually finish a little faster than that
4:40
But as the paint dries, we will sit and watch and see what happens
4:44
I will also tell you that while that's happening, notice here there's a folder called secure drive original data
4:52
It turns out that the drive comes with two really, really helpful little apps
4:56
One of which is called Drive Security. And the other one is called USB to Cloud
5:02
And Drive Security is basically an antivirus program that automatically scans your drive every time you turn it on and make it available to your computer
5:12
It installs, if you want it, it installs on your computer. And there's a Mac and a Windows version
5:18
Not sure if there's a Linux version. You might check with the vendor on that. And then USB to Cloud
5:23
I'm going to go ahead and drop in a screenshot here. USB to Cloud is really cool
5:28
You can set that up. So, automatically, whenever you plug in your drive and make it accessible
5:33
whatever's on the drive can automatically be backed up to any of Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, Box, or Amazon Web Services
5:42
And meanwhile, you can see that the 2GIG file has been successfully copied onto the hard drive
5:48
And now, obviously, if you've finished out and you have all the file caching and everything done
5:55
then you can go ahead and just unplug the drive. But let's go ahead and eject it
5:59
So, I'm going to just choose Eject Secure Drive. And it's done
6:03
Now, let me switch back on camera. So, that's how it works. It's pretty cool
6:07
And now, since I've ejected it safely from the operating system, I can just unplug it
6:12
And now, it's back to being highly secure. So, if I plug this into the computer again, even right now, even just seconds after I've unplugged it, it will require the passcode again
6:23
That's exactly what you want. And I really like that. And, you know, it's pin-based, so it's really straightforward
6:30
There's no complexity. I previously reviewed another secure data drive that uses Bluetooth and has your phone
6:37
And it's much more sophisticated than this. But there's something very pleasant about such a simple design for a hard drive
6:44
And one of the things that I think this is great for is sharing your drive, right
6:49
So, let's say I'm working on a big confidential project with a company, and I need to drop off the drive or mail the drive, right
6:56
And we're both worried, well, what if someone intercepts that drive or it gets lost
7:00
We cannot afford to have this data just go out in the wild. Or I have friends that are psychotherapists and doctors, and they absolutely, I mean, by law, they can't have their data go out into the wild
7:12
They need to control it. This would obviously be an excellent solution for them because if they leave this at Starbucks, if someone intercepts that FedEx package
7:21
if it just gets lost in the mail and the post office finds this on the floor and says, well, let's plug it in and see what it is
7:27
no one will ever find that data. No one will be able to get to it without that PIN code
7:32
Super, super valuable. It also has the ability in an admin mode for you to set up a PIN code that gives them only read access
7:40
So, then it gives them read-only access to the drive. And that's great, too, because quite frankly, you know, there are definitely situations where I want to share my drive or share my data with someone
7:51
but I don't want to ever worry that they might have messed with it or anything
7:55
So, giving them read-only access as the only way it would work, because that's frankly the only PIN I give them, that's really cool
8:03
So, there's a lot I like about this SecureDrive KP. I will tell you, it is a little spendy because you're paying for an external SSD or an external hard drive
8:13
It might be a more traditional physical drive. And you're paying for all the encryption and everything
8:18
So, there's a lot going on here. And I will say that I talked about the Drive Security Antivirus
8:24
Disappointingly, it's only a one-year subscription. I really think they should just give you a lifetime subscription as one of the benefits of paying for this premium product
8:32
But that's something you can take up with the vendor when you decide to buy one
8:36
So, speaking of which, let's talk about the price. But before we get to the price, can I ask if you can subscribe to my channel
8:42
Really appreciate if you can subscribe. It's really helpful. And leave me a comment
8:46
Let me know when you're dealing with secure data, when you're dealing with secure files, how are you keeping them safe and secure
8:53
Do you have them in the cloud? Do you have them backed up? Do you use something like Dropbox as a way to share it with a client or with a customer
9:01
And how does that work from a security perspective versus, obviously, something like this
9:06
Now, let's talk price. This is the SecureData SecureDrive KP. And the one I have in my hand is the entry-level, least expensive
9:16
It's a 250-gigabyte SSD or solid-state drive. And that costs $249. If you want to have it be a traditional hard drive, then you can get a 1-terabyte hard drive with exactly the same configuration
9:31
It looks the same, same thickness and everything. And that is also $249 for what they call an HDD
9:38
But, really, if you can afford it, the solid-state drives are way better because they're so much faster
9:43
So, let's say you want to double this. The 500-gig SSD is $349
9:49
And then let's say you just actually won the lottery or you have a really, really successful company that just got funded
9:56
And you say, 8-terabyte solid-state drive? Good gravy! They make an 8-terabyte version of this
10:02
The answer is, yeah, they do. It is, however, $3,299. So, I'm not sure how many people are going to buy that, but 8 terabytes
10:11
I really, that's my want. I want that 8-terabyte drive. In the meantime, I will live with this 250-gigabyte one
10:19
And you can check this out and that entire range of different sizes and, frankly, some of the other secure drives that they have that are really interesting products all at SecureDrive.com
10:30
This is Dave Taylor. Let me plug this back in and get back to work, which means I will catch you
10:35
Hang on a second. Let me plug in the cable. I will catch you
10:40
One more plug. There we go. I will catch you in my next video
10:45
I'm Dave Taylor. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. I'm out. I'm out
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I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out
10:56
I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out
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I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out
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I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out
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