SanDisk Extreme 510 Portable SSD Review: Rugged, External Storage
Software, Test Setup, SiSoft SANDRA
SanDisk SecureAccess: SanDisk SecureAccess is included with the Extreme 510. It is a fairly simple to use application that give users the ability to secure personal files on the drive using AES128 encryption. The setup is easy, and only requires a password of at least 6 alphanumeric characters. Using the tool sets up a private vault on the hard drive.
As you can see, you can force the password to be as strong, or as weak as you want it. Just keep in mind, the weaker the password, the easier it'll be to crack.
Moving files too and from this vault is easy. Once you have your drive plugged in, all you have to do is open the SecureAccess software, enter your password, and then drag and drop to and from the SecureAccess file browser. You can also use the menu to add files and folders to the vault.
Anytime your drive is unplugged, the files are locked down. So, if you lose your drive, or it gets stolen, you are protected without having to take any additional steps.
SanDisk also offers an upgraded, more capable encryption tool if you feel the need for more protection. This, of course, comes at a price. The EncryptStick Software 6.0 is currently available for about $13.
Our Test Methodologies: Under each test condition, the Solid State Drives tested here were installed as external or secondary volumes in our testbed, with a separate drive used for the OS and benchmark installations. Out testbed's motherboard was updated with the latest BIOS available as of press time and AHCI (or RAID) mode was enabled. The SSDs were secure erased prior to testing, and left blank without partitions for some tests, while others required them to be partitioned and formatted, as is the case with our ATTO benchmark tests. Windows firewall, automatic updates and screen savers were all disabled before testing. In all test runs, we rebooted the system, ensured all temp and prefetch data was purged, and waited several minutes for drive activity to settle and for the system to reach an idle state before invoking a test.
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First up, we have some numbers with SiSoft SANDRA 2016, the the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. Here, we used the Physical Disk test suite and provide the results from our comparison drives, which includes and array of SATA and USB-attached offerings. The benchmarks were run on unformatted drives and read and write performance metrics are detailed below.
The SanDisk Extreme 510 is not quite as fast as the Samsung T3 we reviewed recently, but it is still plenty fast with transfer speeds in excess of 300MB/s.
