INTRODUCTION

   It's no secret that both government and large company employees fall victims of data theft quite often (industrial espionage also happens to be on the news lately) so for such people data security/safety is of the outmost importance when out to get a new portable drive. Of course, performance and storage capacity are also two very important factors when choosing a portable drive and so it all comes down to what choices are available in the market and of course just how good they are (cost on the other hand is usually of no concern to such buyers). For good or bad only a handful of manufacturers are in the business of hardware authenticated portable drives and iStorage is among them so after testing their diskAshur PRO2 512GB SSD model aimed towards buyers who are after high-performance today with us we have the diskAshur PRO2 5TB HDD model which is aimed towards buyers looking for the sweet spot between performance and capacity.

   iStorage is the trusted global leader of award winning PIN authenticated, hardware encrypted data storage devices. Delivering the most innovative products to securely store and protect data to military specified encryption levels; safeguarding valuable business information whilst ensuring compliance to regulations and directives.

   Just like all the previous products we've reviewed by iStorage the diskAshur PRO2 is also a tamper-proof (protected against brute attacks, external tamper, bypass laser attacks and fault injections) PIN authenticated (platform/device independent / 7-15 digit codes) USB 3.1 portable drive (currently available in 500GB/1TB/2TB/3TB/4TB/5TB for the HDD line and 128/256/512/1TB/2TB/4TB for the SSD line) that features real-time military grade FIPS PUB 197 validated AES-XTS 256-bit hardware encryption (FIPS 140-2 Level 2-3/NCSC CPA/NLNCSA BSPA/NATO Restricted Certified). Safety/security measures however once again expand into other areas of the drive so leaving out the usual epoxy covered keypad (makes it virtually impossible for people to tell which have been used) and the super tough epoxy resin layer placed over its interior components (virtually impossible to remove without causing severe damage) the enclosure of the diskAshur PRO2 is also IP56 certified (dust and water resistant). For all of you who may be wondering as to what HDD models iStorage is using for their diskAshur PRO2 line our sample arrived with the Barracuda 5TB model by Seagate (ST5000LM000 - 5400RPM/128MB Cache).