Corsair 16 GB Padlock 2 USB 2.0 Flash Drive

I just received the drive yesterday, so these are only my initial impressions. 90% of all my work is done on Mac machines. I have 4 in my office network and Mac is the primary environment that I use for all my work. When I received the drive from Amazon, I immediately set it up per the instructions from Corsair and then hooked up to my primary Mac machine. It worked very well. I then tried it out on my other 3 Mac machines with no issues what so ever. The device is USB 2.0 but is supposed to be compatible with USB 3.0. One of my Macs has USB 3.0 hubs and the others have 2.0. There did not seem to be an Issue. I then plugged it into a new PC running Win 7 Pro with both USB 3.0 & 2.0 ports. I began by inserting the drive into a 3.0 hub and had the machine instantly rebooted. I tried a second time and the machine gave me a BSOD. I unplugged the Corsair drive, rebooted the Win machine, plugged the device into a USB 2.0 hub and was able to access the drive.The Win 7 Pro (SP1) machine is built on an Asus H81M-K MoBo, Intel i5 Processor, with 4gb of GSkill RAM. It is designed, and purposed to only be a basic workstation/Point-of-Sale Machine. Since I cannot rule out this machine being the problem, (i.e. there may be an incompatibility issue with the USB 3.0 hubs) I must admit it could have been this particular PC and not the Corsair secure flash drive. After all, the drive did work well when plugged into the 2.0 hubs.Given all of that, I still give the drive a 5 star rating on initial examination. The only gripe I have is with the instruction "manual". It is in a cheat sheet format with print that is so small I had to use both my glasses and a magnifying glass to read them. However, the instructions are very simple and easy to apply. And the security measures do work. I have tried several methods to defeat the security code, even to the point of having to reformat the drive because I made too many unsuccessful attempts to brute force the password.If you need military grade protection this is probably not the drive for you. But if you're like me and just need to transport secure files this drive will probably do the job you need. The price is right and Corsair has proven to me to be a quality product. I'll review this product again in the future after I've had an opportunity to use and test it further.But buyer beware. Please read all the other reviews. There are some issues that others have had problems. And again this is just an initial impression of the device.Finally, cudos for Amazon. If you're gonna buy. Buy from Amazon. And be sure you pay for an Amazon Prime account. Prime pays for itself in the long run.

This is a great flash drive for storing important documents that you don't want to be in your computer.Am not getting in to the technical things and start complaining about this or that....if you purchase this flash drive, you will use it for what is made for keeping documents secure. Having said that i have done a little research and this flash drive will keep your stuff secure from everyone else, including yourself if you forget your password. ALWAYS place a code that will be easy to remember other wise you can say bye bye to the files if you forget it. The only way to access the flash drive after that is by wiping it and unless you work for the FBI or NSA am pretty sure those files will be gone.Things that can be a little issue NOT a deal breaker.....-USB cap...never been a fan of USB caps always misplace them or loose these but hey just gotta be a little more careful-Time for password verification... after the password is placed and you have your flash drive in the unlocked status you only have a limited time to plug in your computer before it goes back to locked mode. Why point this out... well lets say you computer placed in a certain position where the USB plugs can not be reached so easily then you will need to constantly key the password in until you get the USB plugged in**Not sure if you can key the password while the drive is connected to the computer but i would never put pressure on a USB and risk damaging the computers' USB port (just my opinion)Overall Great price!, reliable company, solid unit....

I had to decide between this flash drive and Apricorn Aegis 16 GB USB 2.0 Military Grade 256-bit AES CBC Hardware Encrypted Secure Key Flash Drive (ASK-256-16GB). I decided to try the Corsair first, because it's a lot less expensive. But even after a lot of searching on the Internet, I'm still not entirely sure this product is secure.Assuming that the currently available version of the Padlock 2 has addressed all of the problems mentioned in other reviews here, there are still discussions about how the security can be disabled by electrically modifying the circuitry (which is accessible if you break it open). The Apricorn Aegis is entirely encapsulated in an epoxy compound, and it would be a lot harder to access the circuitry without destroying the device (although, frankly, I can tell you that it's possible, although that may still not allow disabling the security, depending on how the device was designed).The short story is that if you've got secrets affecting national security, you're simply not going to put them on one of these devices. At least not on the Corsair, and probably not on the Apricorn, either. But is it good enough for keeping sensitive personal stuff like account numbers and passwords? I just don't know. I hope so, but a safer solution would be software like TrueCrypt (which is free) on any vanilla USB flash drive. I haven't done that, because I use my flash drive, formatted HFS+, on both Windows (via MacDrive) and Mac, and I haven't yet tried to use TrueCrypt with MacDrive (although it supposedly works). It's possible to use TrueCrypt with exFAT partitions which are portable without MacDrive, but it gets a bit inconvenient compared to a hardware solution like the Corsair and Apricorn devices. I wanted a security solution that's portable, easy to use and completely invisible to the OS, and only the Corsair and Apricorn provide that.The Corsair has been doing a good job for me for the past few months, so I'll continue to use it. But I might eventually get the Apricorn, but not for the reason you'd think (better security): I actually don't like the funky Corsair package, I prefer the sleek Apricorn! Talk about a silly reason to choose a security product :-).Update 24-apr-2012:I recently stumbled upon a very elegant platform-independent hardware encryption solution that looks like it might've been a better choice than either the Corsair or Apricorn products: it's called CipherUSB by Addonics, a Chinese company that makes a variety of very useful storage-related products. Amazon currently carries a number of Addonics products, but the CipherUSB isn't available, yet (you can probably get it from other vendors).The device is a very clever idea: it sits between your computer and any USB storage device, and transparently encrypts/decrypts information. The main complaint that I've seen is that it can't do in-place encryption: if you have data on your device, you first have to copy it off to something else, then reformat your USB device with the CipherUSB, then copy your data back to it. This makes sense, given the way the CipherUSB works, but it could be inconvenient in some situations.Another possible complaint might be that you may not want such a long USB appliance sticking out of your computer - you might want to add a short USB extension to avoid problems of breakage. This doesn't leave you with a very compact package, like the Corsair and Apricorn, but considering that you'll probably want to use this with a larger device (like an external hard drive), it's not a big problem.In any case, it's a clever solution, and I hope that Amazon will carry it soon.