Tech on the Go; Meet the Kingston DataTraveler Locker+

Setup
To setup the DT Locker + you simple insert the drive into an available USB 2.0 or 1.1 slot. It will load its unencrypted partition. This partition is formatted as a CDFS file system which actually makes it looks like a CD-ROM to your system. This should help prevent accidental overwriting of the boot partition as removal of this would prevent the drive from working properly.

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Once interested you will find the DT Locker+ has a few files on it. The most important of which [for Windows users] is the DTLplus_Launcher.exe file. Also found on the drive are the files to allow the DT Locker+ to work on a Mac as well as manuals to explain how to use the DT Locker+.

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Once you run the DTLplus_Launcher app it will allow you to setup the encrypted part of your drive.
The launch app will take you through a short series of setups to initialize and encrypt your DT Locker+

After you are finished the launcher app will format your drive… unfortunately for compatibility it will format it FAT32. This is a problem with Windows though, as in Windows if you try to move large files to the drive it will fail as FAT32 just cannot support files over a certain size [1GB if I remember correctly]. But all is not lost; you can actually format the drive once it is decrypted [after opening the launcher and typing in the password] this will not affect the encrypted state of your data but will allow you to have the benefits of NTFS. Once you have formatted the drive you will notice that you have two drives there. One is the CDFS partition and the other is your newly decrypted partition. If you log out the 2nd partition will not be visible any longer.



To access your data after you are done setting it up you launch the DTLplus_launcher application again. This time it will prompt you for your password; you simply type it in and you are off.  If you forget your password things are not so good for you. Although you do have the option to put in a hint, there is no recovering the password if that hint does not do it.

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Clicking on “Forgot Password” only prompts you to reformat the drive to protect your data. Likewise typing in the password incorrectly ten times will result in the drive formatting itself.  In all the DT Locker+ is pretty secure once you initialize it.

Performance
The DT Locker+ is a fairly fast little drive. It is capable of 28MB/s read speeds and is even able to run a virtual machine [VM] from it without too much trouble. I tested this by installing an ACE VM onto the DT Locker+ and running it from the encrypted partition. I was pleased with the speed, true it was not the same as a 7200RPM HDD or SSD. But it was more than fast enough to work. For normal files and even HD video it was very good. I did not experience any issues with data transfer, reading, or execution of applications from the drive.

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