Amacom EzSecure Grange-over-Sands
While most manufacturers of 2.5in portable hard drives are concentrating on making them as small and robust as possible while adding ever more capacious disks, Amacom's ezSecure is a bulky, 160GB device that looks less than stylish.
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Amacom EzSecure
While most manufacturers of 2.5in portable hard drives are concentrating on making them as small and robust as possible while adding ever more capacious disks, Amacom's ezSecure is a bulky, 160GB device that looks less than stylish. However, it does have one feature that the company hopes will compensate for its aesthetic shortcomings - a touchscreen numeric keypad that allows you to secure the contents of the drive with a pin code, which can be up to 12 digits long.
Using the ezSecure for the first time is easy. Simply plug the mini USB connector on the supplied cable into the drive and the two USB plugs on the other end into your Mac. Amacom explains the reason it has two USB connectors on the computer end is that some USB 2 interfaces don't supply enough power on their own to run the drive. We found that if we connected it directly to the back of our iMac, one USB plug wasn't sufficient to provide both power and data - we could enter a passcode, but the disk didn't spin up or mount on the Desktop.
With the drive connected, you flick the on/off switch on its rear and are then invited to supply the default key code, 000000. The drive emits a high-pitched beep with every key press, which is an irritation. There are two options after that: use the drive to store data as normal, or hit the Setup button and choose your own pin code. Additional security features include blocking access after three failed attempts to enter the key code, and securing data on the disk even when it's removed from the case.
In our tests, the drive managed sustained data-transfer rates of between 15 and 19MB/sec. This is about 75% of the speed of Freecom's Mobile Drive XXS (see MacUser, 12 September, p28) and about half that of an average FireWire portable drive. So, it's not the drive to go for you if transfer speed is important. If, however, security is more important than speed, then performance reduction isn't a high price to pay for protecting your data and we can imagine that, given recent data loss incidents, there might be a few Government departments and other public organisations interested in the ezSecure.
Needs USB port
Using the ezSecure for the first time is easy. Simply plug the mini USB connector on the supplied cable into the drive and the two USB plugs on the other end into your Mac. Amacom explains the reason it has two USB connectors on the computer end is that some USB 2 interfaces don't supply enough power on their own to run the drive. We found that if we connected it directly to the back of our iMac, one USB plug wasn't sufficient to provide both power and data - we could enter a passcode, but the disk didn't spin up or mount on the Desktop.
With the drive connected, you flick the on/off switch on its rear and are then invited to supply the default key code, 000000. The drive emits a high-pitched beep with every key press, which is an irritation. There are two options after that: use the drive to store data as normal, or hit the Setup button and choose your own pin code. Additional security features include blocking access after three failed attempts to enter the key code, and securing data on the disk even when it's removed from the case.
In our tests, the drive managed sustained data-transfer rates of between 15 and 19MB/sec. This is about 75% of the speed of Freecom's Mobile Drive XXS (see MacUser, 12 September, p28) and about half that of an average FireWire portable drive. So, it's not the drive to go for you if transfer speed is important. If, however, security is more important than speed, then performance reduction isn't a high price to pay for protecting your data and we can imagine that, given recent data loss incidents, there might be a few Government departments and other public organisations interested in the ezSecure.
Author: Kenny Hemphill
