Product Listing

GStor Secure Mobile Storage

By Dr. Jimmy Tang - 28 Jul 2006

Drive Specifications

Drive Specifications

The external drive sent to us for review had a capacity of only 80GB, with a spindle speed of 7200RPM. It is based on Excelstor's brand of hard drives which is quite similar in built to that of IBM's previous generation of hard drives. The full technical specifications of the external drive is as tabulated below:-

GStor Secure Mobile Storage Technical Specifications
Model No. GSMS1080
Interface USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 compatible)
Capacity 80GB
Rotational Speed 7200RPM
Buffer 2MB
Weight 1072g
Dimension (WxHxL) 133mm x 38mm x 208mm

The drive comes with a sleek aluminum case which Excelstor boasts would help to dissipate the heat generated by the drive during prolonged usage. However, the fact that the drive itself is isolated in a plastic tray within the casing really defeats the purpose of having an all aluminum chassis since it is not possible for heat to be effectively conducted to the chassis. Thus, we feel that the chassis is mainly just for aesthetic rather any functional purposes. We think the design of the drive's chassis could be further improved especially where reliability is concerned.

The hard disk drive is placed on a plastic tray which can be easily removed from the aluminum chassis. Heat dissipation is likely an issue with such a design.

The rear end of the drive has the usual USB 2.0 port, power connector and a unique GStor security key slot which looks like a regular Firewire port. Connecting this port on the drive to your PC's Firewire port may cause irrepairable damage - never do that.

The most unique feature of the drive is of course its embedded 64-bit encryption engine that scrambles all data on-the-fly. The drive will encrypt and decrypt data through the drive's controller hardware and it doesn't require the installation of any software on the client's PC. This makes it extremely easy to transport data securely from one location to another, and accessing them on any computer is not an issue since key authentication is done at the hardware level.

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