The Kingston DataTraveler Elite – Privacy Edition

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The Kingston DataTraveler Elite Privacy Edition was found to be easy to setup and use on a daily basis. The added security and peace of mind that our files were stored on a hardware encrypted drive was truly priceless. While the Privacy Edition carries a price premium over traditional USB Flash Drives, but we can?t hold that as a negative as you get what you pay for. When you buy a nice card many people get car alarms. When you buy a nice house or go out of town often you purchase a home security system. If you have neighbors close by you put up curtains. Why do we do this? We do this for added privacy and security. When it comes to some things in life you can?t put a price tag on them. With more and more paper work turning digital the number of important and private material that we know have as 1?s and 0?s is often a security threat for many corporations and individuals around the world.

We have been using the privacy drive for a number of weeks and have traveled with it on several occasions for real-world testing. We found that the Privacy Edition USB Flash Drive is something that really gets used often . I found myself saving confidential media on the Privacy drive instead of on my notebook hard drive. I guess my logic was that notebooks get stolen often when traveling, but keys often don?t these days. While this logic may not make sense to many, it does in my head and that means peace of mind. Having one less thing to worry about during the day makes the DTE Privacy more of a stress reliever rather than just another piece of hardware to lug around.

In terms of transfer speeds we found the drive to have exceptional write speeds and read speeds that were par for the course. Kingston claimed up to 24MB/Sec transfer rates for read speeds and when using HD Tach we were seeing 23.9MB/Sec, thus confirming the Kingston packaging. Backed by a Kingston 5-year warranty with free tech support buyers can rest assured they purchased a quality device where if help is needed it is just a quick phone call away. As many corporate IT managers know free tech support is becoming a rare thing these days!

The drive comes in 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB models, ranging in price from $44 to $312. The 2GB model that we used for this review will set you back $158 direct from Kingston or around $138 from their online retailer partners.

Legit Bottom Line:

The Kingston DataTraveler Elite Privacy Edition offers 128-bit AES hardware encryption ensuring that your digital media does just that ? stays yours.