SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE ArmorLock SSD, 2TB, USB-C 3.1

The G-Technology ArmorLock encrypted SSD is a very interesting portable NVMe SSD, but is not for everyone.

The G-Technology ArmorLock drive speaks to those industries who need a means of securing multiple terabytes of sensitive data on an external storage solution that can be easily shared amongst authorised personnel and moved between locations. It only makes sense to offer it in a capacity that's beyond the remit of most fast, secure Internet transfers, and the 2TB drive - the only one available - is plenty fast, suitably ruggerdised, and host powered. These characteristics are nothing new to G-Technology as it offers a wide breadth of fast external storage. The real benefit is security through the all-new ArmorLock platform. Offering always-on hardware-based drive encryption accessed via an app negates the need for passwords and pins, and it works consistently well enough to unlock the contents within five seconds. Mating security, capacity, and speed in one tough package successfully addresses the needs of professional users who won't baulk at the £559 price. In summary, the G-Technology ArmorLock encrypted NVMe 2TB SSD is a robust solution for sectors where physically storing, moving and accessing high-value data is a priority.

The G-Technology ArmorLock Encrypted NVMe SSD is the first product of Western Digital’s new ArmorLock Security platform. WD is looking for a balance of high-performance, security, and ease of use. The drive leverages USB 3.2 Gen 2 for quoted performance of 1GB/s in both read and write. It is tough enough to survive shipping. While there are several use cases for a product like this, the company has called out M&E as one of the use cases and we detailed a scenario for use in the introduction above. Chatting with our creative team, there seems to be good alignment here. Management is done through a simple and intuitive mobile app. Users can setup and start using the device in a matter of minutes. As it is designed to be shipped, remote users can quickly be setup as well using biometrics on their phones to unlock it and access the data. When it comes to secure devices like this, the security is only good if it’s used. Often times the drives will have security disabled because it’s too cumbersome to use, or that classic move of taping the security code to the back of the device so literally everyone knows what it is. G-Technology has solved these problems by making access not only easy, but easy to share as well. For testing we used both Blackmagic and IOMeter, 1 thread and 4 thread. In Blackmagic the drive hit 887.2MB/s read and 881.3MB/s write. In 1 thread IOMeter the SSD hit 826MB/s read and 745MB/s in 2MB sequential, 754MB/s read and 747MB/s write in 2MB random, and 5,409 IOPS read and 16,341 IOPS write in 4K random. In 4 Thread IOMeter the G-Tech drive hit 999.4MB/s read and 957MB/s in 2MB sequential (hitting its quoted speeds), 994MB/s read and 949MB/s write in 2MB random, and 22,906 IOPS read and 39,617 IOPS write in 4K random. The G-Technology ArmorLock Encrypted NVMe SSD provides far more security than the normal portable drive, with easy to use apps for drive and user access management. It also leverages the ubiquitous USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface, delivering a a pretty good performance profile. It should be noted that G-Technology has faster portable drives should speed be the primary concern. Security and ease of use is the crux of this particular matter however. At $600 the drive is expensive, but it’s clearly the class leader in providing high-security portable storage that offers simple, yet powerful, management tools.

Just about the fastest data transfer available in an encrypted SSD at just about the best price we can find says it all for the G-Technology Armorlock Encrypted SSD. Add to that a 5-year warranty, great capacity size of 2TB as well as remote device and user access and it is obvious that G-Technology has put alot of thought into this SSD.