After plugging in the drive and getting everything working, it was time to
install the software. On the root of the drive you will find 2 programs
you can install, and a couple of PDFs full of information. You are not
required to install either program, and if you choose not to, the drive will
still work fine.
The first program is a really neat app called DataTraveler.
Basically it’s a multi-purpose tool that you can use to synchronize your My
Documents folder, Favorites, and other personalized items with the drive.
This way, if you frequently use computers other than your own, you will have up
to date copies of all of your files with you at all times. The app also
allows you to unmount the drive by simply clicking the eject button. This
saves you the trouble of having to go through Window's cumbersome process of
removing the drive. It also gives you a running tally of how much free
space you have on the drive.
The second and very useful app contained on the drive is
TravelerSafe+. Basically, this app reformats the drive and breaks it into
two sections. The first section acts like a standard USB drive, while
the second section is only visible and accessible via a password.
Setup is a breeze. Simply run the executable found on the drive,
select how much space you want to keep private, enter your password twice, a
hint should you desire one, and then click Ok. Be warned though, this
program will erase everything on the drive, so if you have anything on it, back
it up first.
After
the program is finished setting up the drive, only the TravelerSafe+ executable
will remain on the drive. Right now, the drive looks and acts like a
normal drive would. Since I set my private area to 150MB, the
public drive only has around 350MB of free space rather than the full space
of the drive. Essentially what the program has done is partition the USB
drive into 2 sections. When you run the program again, and enter your password,
the drive accesses the second partition rather than the first. The only
drawback is that you cannot access the private and public areas of the drive at
the same time. So if your MP3 collection is on the public side and your
spreadsheets are on the private side, you cannot listen to your MP3s and work on
spreadsheets at the same time, unless you move one or the other onto another
drive.
Getting to the secured files is ridiculously easy. All you
must do is run the executable found on the public area of the drive, enter your
password, and hit log in. The public contents will disappear and be
replaced with the private ones. You even have the option of "trusting" the
computer you are on. If you enable this option, the drive will not prompt
you for a password when you are on that machine. This would be handy to do
on your home computer or any computer that you frequently use and don't want to
bother with a password.
Once you enter your password, the private area of the drive is
shown. You can tell that your files are private when they are highlighted
with orange. When the drive is in the private area, it acts just as normal
until you double click the logout shortcut in the private area. You can
even eject the drive without logging out of the secure zone. It will still
prompt you for a password when the drive is reinserted.
The program will warn you about leaving the private zone.
Once you leave the private zone, it will be like you ejected the drive, so
naturally you should save and close anything you opened before doing so.
