Cruzer Profile - 1gb product reviews

Well, it's a rare thing, but occassionally I need to carry confidential client information around. It wouldn't be a disaster if I lost it, but now and then it could prove embarassing to try and explain to the client why their expensive new artwork is suddenly sitting on some template website, free to download...

I used to simply pack all the files into an password-protected archive file, but having had to break an archive open myself once or twice, due to a mis-typed password, or a simple case of forgetfulness, I soon realised that with a very small effort such security could be broken. So it was time to explore more secure options.

Enter, stage right, the Cruzer Profile. With an integrated fingerprint scanner it was the very best hybrid of biometric scanner and portable storage media. Not only do you get a smidge under a gig of secure storage space, but you get a pretty-much unbeatable method of securing it... unless you happen to lose your fingers to a rather skillful thief.

With a swag of high-end software tools pre-installed on the drive, you lose around 17meg of storage... but that still leaves you about 960meg of storage space. (Recall that "1gig" in sales-speak is 1 billion bytes, which is not 1gig in tech speak.) All the scanned fingerprints appear to be stored in the internal flashram, meaning scanning more fingerprints doesn't mean reduced storage or performance. You can get away with scanning a single fingerprint, but it is recommended you scan at least 2 for redundancy reasons. Having the scanner as a separate unit attached means that it's reasonably easy to scan your prints when the unit is plugged into a PC or laptop... you can twist it around to fit your fingers.

On to the tests... After digging out the speed-test files, it was time to test the factory claims of read/write speeds. Test 1: Writing 100mb to the drive... 21 seconds... a VERY respectable transfer rate, especially considering I wrote it to the secure partition. (No room on the 18mb size-locked 'public' partition.) Extremely close to the manufacturers 'optimum conditions' test speed. Test 1: Passed with flying colours. Now to check the read speed... time to pull the file back off the drive... A screaming 3 seconds! FAR faster than the 'minimum' specifications. Blazing fast, seriously impressive. Test 2: Passed, scorchingly. A few more tests of larger files, bulk quantities of smaller files, mixed file formats, etc. only served to reinforce these stunning results. Write speeds ranged from 5.1mb/sec to 8.2mb/sec, with read speeds never falling below 10.1mb/sec, though in some circumstances I could imagine it being a bit slower, if the machine is under high workload at the time.

Overall... quite probably the best portable, secure, storage media on the market. I haven't seen anything like this on the market... but I can bet you we soon will... good ideas always get copied. My only gripe is that, again, 1gb is at the bottom end of the storage scale in today's market, and I would like to see 4gb+ available.