A closer look at the IronKey USB for the new Windows 7

 The IronKey enhanced the maximum capacity of its ultra-secure USB flash drive.From the IronKey it is seen that there are less few upgrades to this latest version of what is still importantly the most secure USB drive in existence. The new S200 IronKey model enhances the maximum capacity of the previous drive to 16GB, and it is now compatible with Windows 7. It was already compatible with Windows Vista, XP, Mac OS X and Linux.This drive is not for the average user. The IronKey is high-end and its price tag shows that. A drive with only 1GB capacity costs $79.00 retail. If you want the optimize on 16GB capacity, the price jumps to $299.00.It is uncertain whether this falls under the term "upgrade," but the drive has got validation with the Federal Information Processing Standards 140-2, Level 3, which has under its cover document processing, encryption algorithms and other IT standards for usage in non-military government agencies, which includes their vendors and contractors. IronKey says that it is the world's only FIPS 140-2, Level 3 certified USB drive. What keeps the IronKey apart from most other USB drives is that its maker utilizes high-end single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory chips when compared to multi-level cell, consumer-grade (MLC) NAND.

SLC has better native performance over MLC, and, also most importantly, it has as much as 10 times longevity, up to 100,000 write/erase cycles.Since the IronKey uses high-end SLC NAND, its performance tends to be a bit higher than most MLC-based flash drives, particularly when it comes to write rates. An IronKey representative said that the new version is also supposed to be faster than the last model owing to improvements in the firmware.A test on the the drive was carried out using ATTO Technology's ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34, and Simpli Software's HD Tach v3.0.4 benchmarking its uses. With the HD Tach utility, the IronKey gave back a random access time of 4.2 milliseconds, an average sequential read rate of 25.7MB/sec and a burst rate only a little higher of 26.9MB/sec. CPU utilization was a high 19%. The ATTO Benchmarking software gave a similar read rate, 24.4MB/sec, and a write rate of 14.8MB/sec. 

The tests showed that generally slower I/O throughput rates than the previous version of the IronKey drive that was tested, but to be fair, the penultimate drive had 5GB of capacity and the one that was being tested for the review had only 1GB.  Normally saying, the more capacity a NAND flash drive has, the much better performance it delivers. 

 The IronKey enhanced the maximum capacity of its ultra-secure USB flash drive.From the IronKey it is seen that there are less few upgrades to this latest version of what is still importantly the most secure USB drive in existence. The new S200 IronKey model enhances the maximum capacity of the previous drive to 16GB, and it is now compatible with Windows 7. It was already compatible with Windows Vista, XP, Mac OS X and Linux.

This drive is not for the average user. The IronKey is high-end and its price tag shows that. A drive with only 1GB capacity costs $79.00 retail. If you want the optimize on 16GB capacity, the price jumps to $299.00.

It is uncertain whether this falls under the term "upgrade," but the drive has got validation with the Federal Information Processing Standards 140-2, Level 3, which has under its cover document processing, encryption algorithms and other IT standards for usage in non-military government agencies, which includes their vendors and contractors. IronKey says that it is the world's only FIPS 140-2, Level 3 certified USB drive.

 What keeps the IronKey apart from most other USB drives is that its maker utilizes high-end single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory chips when compared to multi-level cell, consumer-grade (MLC) NAND. SLC has better native performance over MLC, and, also most importantly, it has as much as 10 times longevity, up to 100,000 write/erase cycles.

Since the IronKey uses high-end SLC NAND, its performance tends to be a bit higher than most MLC-based flash drives, particularly when it comes to write rates. An IronKey representative said that the new version is also supposed to be faster than the last model owing to improvements in the firmware.

A test on the the drive was carried out using ATTO Technology's ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34, and Simpli Software's HD Tach v3.0.4 benchmarking its uses. With the HD Tach utility, the IronKey gave back a random access time of 4.2 milliseconds, an average sequential read rate of 25.7MB/sec and a burst rate only a little higher of 26.9MB/sec. CPU utilization was a high 19%. The ATTO Benchmarking software gave a similar read rate, 24.4MB/sec, and a write rate of 14.8MB/sec.

The tests showed that generally slower I/O throughput rates than the previous version of the IronKey drive that was tested, but to be fair, the penultimate drive had 5GB of capacity and the one that was being tested for the review had only 1GB.  Normally saying, the more capacity a NAND flash drive has, the much better performance it delivers.