We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying a sample of their Secure G50 USB 3.0 Flash Drive for testing and reviewing.

 

 

About Silicon Power:

 

"Founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic data storage industry experts, Silicon Power is committed to delivering outstanding product and service quality. Headquartered and with our own state-of-the-art production site in Taipei, we have become a leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, solid state drives, DRAM modules and industrial-grade products. As an international player with four branch offices around the globe, we continuously strive to offer the perfect data storage solution for all requirements of modern digitalized life. With a strong focus on combining innovative technology and award-winning design, we live up to our brand promise to reliably preserve and protect your most valuable data.

Because memory is personal."

 

Product Features:

 

Your Defense Against Data Leaks and Online Hacking

 

The Secure G50 flash drive defends your personal information and data from hackers and corporate data leaks by keeping your data safe in one secure location. With cloud storage becoming riskier and the need for data-protection policies like General Data Protection Regulation -GDPR from the European Union becoming more common, it is time to protect your data from a complex world with protection you can keep safe in your hand.

 

Secure G50

 

The Secure G50 enhances the level of data security. This drive secures all your data with AES 256-bit hardware-based full disk encryption in XTS mode, offering much stronger data protection over ECB and CBC to prevent unauthorized access.

 

Password Lock Easy Setup

 

The Secure G50 also features superior password protection that the drive locks down and reformats automatically after 10 intrusion attempts. All your data will be deleted to protect against data leakage. It is easy to set up your password without requiring application or driver installation.

 

Software Encryption and Cloud Storage for Extra Protection

 

Users can download data management software for free ? SP Widget, for software-based encryption, data backup and cloud storage functions. It allows you to lock files and folders with passwords, to set up scheduled backup or to manage files on Dropbox. Even if the drive is stolen or destroyed, the data remains safe.

 

Compatible with Major Operating Systems

 

The Secure G50 works with Windows systems and Mac OS, so users can transfer files between multiple systems without installing a program on every computer used.

 

 

Product Specifications:

 

When transferring sensitive data, we must always make sure that only authorized people will have access to it; with the new GDPR rules, data protection is a must when utilizing services at work and portable devices must be secured against external threats as well. In order to help regarding this aspect, Silicon Power has launched the Secure G50 USB 3.0 Flash Drive, which is meant to protect your data with AES 256-bit encryption in XTS mode, offering much stronger data protection over ECB and CBC, for preventing unauthorized access.

 

The drive is shipped inside a small, compact cardboard enclosure, and on the frontal area we can take a look at some of the product highlights:

 

 

 

On the back, we are instructed to activate the product warranty, we are shown the compatible operating systems but the manufacturer does also point towards some downloadable resources:

 

 

 

The drive is further protected inside, with a transparent plastic layer; instructions are supplied as well:

 

 

 

The SP Locker utility takes care of the Lock/Unlock process, that is possible by supplying a password; brute-force password is not possible because after 10 intrusion attempts, all the data will be erased in order to protect against leaks:

 

 

 

The chassis of the drive is made of two different types of plastic finishes and makes you think that you are dealing with a design with a cover, but in reality it is a cap-less design:

 

 

 

 

 

On the back, we can clearly see the button for releasing the USB connector:

 

 

 

 

The opposite side has perforations for using the drive along with a lanyard:

 

 

 

When operating, a small red LED flash will start blinking:

 

 

 

The SP Locker should be ran after the first use of the drive and it will ask the user to create an access password:

 

 

 

If the credentials are entered correctly, we will receive a confirmation:

 

 

 

Every time we eject the drive and reinsert, even if the Secure partition was mounted, it will dismount automatically and ask again for the password:

 

 

 

If the password is entered correctly, we will receive a confirmation:

 

 

 

The Secure partition will then re-mount right away:

 

 

 

After the authentication was completed successfully, SP locker does also offer the user the possibility to reset the password with a new one or disable the security features altogether:

 

 

 

The testbench was composed from the following hardware:

 

CPU: Intel I5 4690K Retail @ stock

Motherboard: BIOSTAR GAMING Z97X

RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 4x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)

Video: Sparkle GTX 470 with stock and OMNI A.L.C.

Power Supply: Nexus RX-8500 850W modular

HDD: OCZ Vertex 4 240GB SSD

Case: Thermaltake Armor+ LCS, stock cooling

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64

The Secure G50 USB 3.0 Flash Drive is split into two partitions; one is public and contains the software necessary for unlocking the drive and the other is hidden (secure), which gets visible only after supplying the correct credentials:

 

Public Partition

Secure Partition

Here is the total storage space on the Secure partition, after it has been made available:

 

 

To determine the flash drive read speeds, the HD Tune v5 utility was used:

 

 

HD Tune File Benchmark

 

 

Summary Graph (Read Performance)

 

To measure the real life performance, we have used the Total Commander application to copy to the flash drive and from the flash drive the same file and recorded the transfer speeds, after they have stabilized.

 

File Copy

File Read

Summary Graph (Real-life performance)

 

 

We have also performed some extra tests with this drive and the results can be checked out right here:

ATTO

 

Anvil

The new Secure G50 USB Flash Drive series from Silicon Power offers an additional layer of protection against data theft by utilizing AES 256-bit hardware-based full-disk encryption in XTS mode and the SP Locker application is the point of interaction for unlocking the sensitive data partition. The drive will re-lock as soon as it has been unmounted and if there have been multiple attempts to guess the password (or brute-force), the drive contents will be erased in order to avoid data leakage.

 

Despite the embedded security features, the drive is quite speedy, so we could copy to it with about 60MB/s and read from it with about 145MB/s.

 

The drive is available with four different SKUs, so businesses may choose the one they would suit better to their needs:

 

-8GB for about 17 Euros

-16GB for about 22 Euros

-32GB for about 32 Euros

-64GB for about 52 Euros

 

We would surely like to see higher capacities in the future for the Secure G50, but also frequent firmware updates in order to maintain compatibility with the latest operating systems.

 

Silicon Power Secure G50 USB 3.0 Flash Drive is Recommended for:

 

 

We would like to thank again to Silicon Power for making this review possible!