iStorage diskGenie Encrypted External HDD Review

In today’s world, information security has become more important than ever before, so we are going to take a look at one of iStorage’s most advanced secure external storage solutions available so far, the diskGenie AES-256 encrypted HDD.

About the same size as two packs of playing cards, the diskGenie is one external drive that doesn’t seem to resemble any other such devices we have seen to date.

This is because, when designing the diskGenie, iStorage placed a large numeric keypad on its top side.

Although it might look a bit odd on a first look, this number pad is what makes the diskGenie different, since it’s used to enter a PIN number that unlocks the drive in order to grant access to the data stored on the HDD.

Without entering the right PIN number, the contents of the drive are not accessible to the OS as this won’t be detected by the host computer.

Furthermore, the data stored on the hard drive is actually hardware encrypted using the AES-256 standard, which means that even if the HDD is removed from its case this can’t be accessed without the security PIN code.

Approved by the US government to be used for classified documents with “Top Secret” ratings, the AES-256 standard has gained quite a lot of popularity lately, as it started being used in a wide range of data storage products targeting the enterprise space, including the Kingston DT4000-M secure USB Flash Drive we reviewed two months ago.

Moving back to the diskGenie, iStorage has two versions of the drive available.

The main difference between the two is the type of storage used for holding your data, as one comes equipped with a faster but pricier SSD unit, while the other uses a more traditional hard disk drive.

For this review, iStorage sent us the HDD version of the diskGenie, which was configured with a 250GB HDD built by Toshiba, but larger capacity units are also available, providing up to 1TB of storage space.

Specifications

Data Transfer Rates:   USB 2.0 - Up to 480Mbps  Power Supply:      100% bus powered  Interface:       Hi-Speed USB 2.0  Buffer Size:       8MB RPM:           5400  Average seek time:     12 ms  Shock - non operating:   1000G 1ms Shock - operating:    300G 2ms  Dimensions & weight:  19mm X 84.5mm X 120mm (0.75" X 3.3" X 4.7") weight: 6.2 oz.  Warranty:       3 years parts and labour  Approvals:      CESG CCTM, FCC, CE, RoHS, WEEE

System Requirements

 Hardware:    PC compatible computer with Pentium CPU or similar, 32MB of RAM, CD-ROM or CD-RW, USB 1.2 or 2.0,        Apple G3 or later      OS:     Windows 2000, Microsoft XP, Vista or Windows 7, Mac OS 10.2 or greater, Linux

Extensive Shock Mounting:      Protects the drive with a 16-point omni-directional shock mounting system

The diskGenie sports hardware AES 256-bit encryption via an on-board engine, which also includes a random number generator.

According to iStorage, this is used to generate the encryption key, which can be unlocked only by entering the PIN password.

Real Life Performance

Since the diskGenie is targeting users who need to keep their data far away from prying eyes, iStorage concentrated on making this drive as safe as possible.

As a result, the diskGenie includes a wide range of security features, which are all available without requiring any additional software to be installed, thus making this drive a true plug-and-play solution.

Once hooked up to the system, by using the attached USB cable, the iStorage diskGenie will go into a special “admin” mode after the default 123456 passcode is entered via its number pad.

It is here where the owner of the drive will be able to change this passcode to something more secure (between six and 16 digits), or where he, or she, can create up to 10 other “User” profiles, each with its own passcode.

These users will be able to access all the data stored on the drive, just as the admin can, but unlike the owner of the diskGenie portable HDD they can’t reset their password or perform other, more advanced, actions.

As far as brute force attacks are concerned, the diskGenie protects itself from this sort of hacking attempts by locking the drive after 50 wrong PINs are entered.

If this happens, a special 7-digit code that is supplied in the manual of the drive is needed in order to unlock it. If 50 more unsuccessful attempts are then made, the drive locks completely. In this case, the only way to unlock it is to reset it, which also erases all the data that was stored on the drive.

While the two layers of control available in the diskGenie will definitely prove to be helpful for big enterprises, where a large number of employees need to access the data stored on the drive, this approach has some downsides.

The most important of these is that with all the 10 “User” passcodes setup and the additional admin account, 11 different PINs are in circulation at a time, which can all completely unlock the drive.

We would have preferred the iStorage to include some sort of management features in the diskGenie that would allow for a more flexible data lock system.

In our opinion, the diskGenie should allow for custom file and folder level access policies to be set up for each one of the 10 users, while a special area of the drive could be reserved for storing data that needs to be shared between the company employees using it.

Of course, it can always add this sort of functionality by installing a third-party software application, but this doesn’t provide the same security level as using specialized hardware.

Talking about the downsides of the diskGenie we should also mention that, although definitely useful, the attached 10cm USB cable is a bit too short for our liking.

An extension cable is included, but this features two USB plugs on the side that connects to the PC (for computers that don’t deliver enough power through a single USB port), which increases desktop cable clutter.

Transfer Speed Performance

While transfer speed performance isn’t as important as in the case of regular hard drives, we did put the diskGenie through a short series of tests to see how well it fares when running day to day tasks.

The results achieved were actually really good for an USB 2.0 Flash drive with hardware AES-256 encryption, as the diskGenie was able to surpass 30MB/s in sequential read test scenarios.

Sequential write performance was also pretty good, since the drive reached 27MB/s in this sort of testing scenarios.

The limiting factor is of course the USB 2.0 interface, but the good news here is that the iStorage diskGenie manages to almost saturate the bandwidth available in the USB 2.0 standard.

For those of you who require even faster transfer speeds, iStorage also builds the diskAshur external drive, which is basically the same thing as the diskGenie, but with USB 3.o support.

Conclusions