Seagate Maxtor BlackArmor 320GB review

£79.74 inc VAT

Manufacturer: Seagate

Our Rating: We rate this 4.5 out of 5 User Rating:

By Andrew Brandt | 04 February 09

The Maxtor BlackArmor encrypted external hard drive is the best product of its kind we've seen, featuring intuitive out-of-the-box experience, good utilities bundle, and reasonable price.

Expert Review
User Reviews
Technical Specs
Our Verdict

The Maxtor BlackArmor encrypted external hard drive is the best product of its kind we've seen, featuring intuitive out-of-the-box experience, good utilities bundle, and reasonable price.

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The Seagate Maxtor BlackArmor is a marvel of simplicity. It's the first external hard drive with full-disk encryption - the encryption chip resides on the hard drive's circuitry.

According to Seagate, all of the data is encrypted on the Maxtor BlackArmor drive, so even if someone removes the drive from the housing and takes away the chipset, the data is inaccessible.

When you first attach the Maxtor BlackArmor to a Windows PC, the drive loads a read-only partition with the setup software. Initialising the drive and setting a password takes only a minute, after which the drive loads the encrypted partition and Windows shows it as a drive letter.

Thereafter, every time you plug in the Maxtor BlackArmor drive, the autorun settings will ask you to enter the password.

The Maxtor BlackArmor also features a Secure Erase option (which overwrites data areas of the drive with zeroes), as well as a backup utility.

PCWorld.com

Maxtor BlackArmor Expert Verdict »

Post Review

Reviewed by cliffsim on Thursday 16 April 2009

Duration of ownership: 2 days

Strengths:
An implacable determination not to install and not to run.

Weaknesses:
In my experience the installation process is NOT as predicted or as straightforward as suggested.

Overall Evaluation:
I bought this unit on the basis of your positive review in PC Advisor. Installation progress did not follow any of the suggested steps and it installed icons of itself in both my internal hard disks. It was not intuitive and then a window appeared announcing that the SN Number had been wrongly set at the factory and I should now return it to Maxtor.

2.5in disk
disk capacity: 320GB
5400RPM
data buffer: 8192KB
USB 2.0
84.2x16.9x131.2mm
0.204kg

Overall:

If you're looking at encrypted portable drives, this model is up there with the best for its value. The Maxtor BlackArmor offers one of the best cost-per-gigabyte rates we've seen, as well as first class simplicity and full-disk-encryption security.

There are currently no price comparisons for this product.

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