Product Reviews

Portable hard drives are an incredibly convenient way of carrying around large volumes of data in a device small enough to fit in your pocket. However, the downside is that due to their diminutive size, portable drives are easily lost or stolen. That's bad enough in itself, but if the data contained on the drive is confidential or commercially sensitive, it could be disastrous. LaCie's Safe Mobile Hard Drive may be the solution.

The drive is an 80GB USB 2 device that measures 130 x 80 x 25mm and weighs in at 230g. So far so ordinary. What marks this drive out from other mobile hard drives, though, is its biometric security feature: fingerprint identification.

Once connected to a Mac, in order to access the drive, you must swipe a finger over the fingerprint reader on top of the case. Only when the reader recognises your print will it allow you to mount, write and read from the hard disk. It's a neat idea that takes a bit of getting used to, but once you've done it a few times it becomes quite easy.

Setup is straightforward. The first time you connect it to a Mac you are presented with an icon that must be double-clicked. The driver software stored on the drive is then installed, and after a restart, double-clicking the icon again launches the configuration wizard. This prompts you to select a finger to be scanned and then asks you to run that finger over the sensor three times to analyse the print. You must then repeat the process with another finger so the drive always

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has a record of two fingers - in case something happens to one of them. You can then allocate yourself admin privileges. If you want more users to access the drive, you add them in the same way.

There is no need to repeat the process for every machine you want to connect the drive to, as the software is stored on the drive itself. Although, you must perform an install and restart the first time you connect the drive to any computer.

The system works reasonably well, but it's not foolproof. A determined hacker could remove the drive from the case and reconnect it through a different case, but it will deter the casual snooper.

The drive is powered by USB, but there's also a separate power socket and an accompanying power-to-USB cable so if the initial USB port doesn't supply enough power, the drive can be powered from another port. That's just as well, as when we tried to connect the Safe Drive to a PowerBook we discovered that even though the status LEDs lit correctly, the drive wasn't getting enough power from the USB port and did nothing. The problem was rectified by plugging in the second cable. This means you need to use both USB ports if you want to use the drive with a portable Mac.

There are a couple of other issues we have with the Safe Drive. The first is that it takes a minute or so after the icon has been clicked to launch the finger-reading software and another minute after that to mount the drive. If all you want to do is copy a few files across, this could be frustrating. The second issue is that it's USB 2 and not FireWire. For those without USB 2, the USB 1.1 speeds at which the drive will operate are just too slow.

The LaCie Safe Mobile Hard Drive is the first implementation of biometric security we've seen and the technology is impressive. The power issue with portable machines is likely to cause frustration, though. If you really need a greater level of security, this drive is a workable solution, but we'd like to see a FireWire version and improved software and power management before we wholeheartedly recommend it.