diskAshur2 Portable Hard Drive Review

Thank you to iStorage for providing the diskAshur2 for review!

One of our “Featured Picks” in this year’s Futuristic Father’s Day Gift Guide For Techies is the diskAshur2 portable hard drive. And today, I’m going to give you an in-depth look at what makes this such a great gift pick for Dad!

My husband and I both work in tech-related fields: Jai does computer repair, while I work full time in blogging & social media field. This means that we use a lot of portable hard drives in our household! He uses them to take open source utilities and programs to his customers when doing housecalls, while I use portable drives to transfer media files between computers and back up files. With the amount of video and image content I create, my hard drive fills up fast!

So when I had the opportunity to review a diskAshur2 PIN authenticated portable USB 3.1 hard drive from iStorage, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. When the package arrived in the mail, Jai was quite literally in the process of clearing off some of our hard drives to make space for some large video files that I needed to transfer. I had planned to surprise Jai with the diskAshur2 on his birthday a few weeks later, but since this was the exact thing we needed to save time and make our job easier, I couldn’t hold out on him, so I handed it to Jai and told him to consider it an early birthday gift!

Right out of the box, Jai was immediately impressed that diskAshur2 not only comes with a has an integrated cord built right on, but a separate high-speed USB extension cord as well. The built-in cord ensures that you never have to fuss with making sure you’ve got the right cord available, while the extension allows you to use it with any setup and is just a generally useful thing to have around for all kinds of applications.

We began using diskAshur2 immediately, transferring all those big video files. Since this drives utilizes USB 3.1, it’s efficient and transfers files quickly. The diskAshur2 line comes in a variety of colors and sizes ranging from 500GB all the way up to 5TB – our model is a spacious 2TB in Fiery Red, since I love bold colors! Having several colors to choose from is also extremely handy to avoid confusion if you have more than one. Just as a portable hard drive, diskAshur2 is fantastic, but what makes it stand out even more is how much peace of mind it brings with its security features.

The diskAshur2 is a hardware encrypted drive that has a keypad built-in, allowing you to secure the data with the pin 7-15 digit PIN. This means that no one can access the drive unless they have the PIN; if the drive is stolen or lost, it even has a “Self-destruct” feature to protect the content if someone enters the wrong PIN 15 consecutive times, and the buttons are coated with wear resistant epoxy so that your PIN can’t be guessed by looking at which buttons have worn down over time. You can even set a specific “Self-destruct code” to wipe everything intentionally, and in case of emergency, you can reach over and hit the lock button on the diskAshur2 to immediately disconnect it from the computer. If you want a gift that will make Dad feel like he’s using a James Bond gadget, this is just the ticket!

The security features are impressive, and really go above and beyond. The 7-15 digit PIN is not easy to guess, in part because the 10-digit keypad also has a shift key, which increases the number of combinations you can do. In addition, you can set an admin PIN and then assign PINS to other users, either for ongoing use or just on a one-time basis for read/write or read-only access. This is great for Dads to grant access to kids while still being able to monitor and control usage!

You may be thinking to yourself, “I don’t need that much security”. But the sad fact is that in today’s world, you have to really guard your data. Everything we do is digitized now, from tax returns to bank account data, and hackers can and do compromise sensitive data all the time. The diskAshur2 has so many practical applications for both Jai and myself: For me, I do so much traveling for work that security is really important. I can’t tell you the number of blog posts and emails I’ve written in airports, hotels or even cabs while traveling for press events, and having my equipment lost or stolen is a real risk; a portable hard drive like this helps to safeguard my data. And since Jai does so many computer jobs on site, traveling with a hard drive is a regular and necessary part of his job; an encrypted drive is perfect to secure both his and his customers’ files.

I’ve become a big fan of iStorage – I also tested out one of their datAshur Pro flash drive earlier this year as part of our Valen-Tech Gift Guide, and I’m really impressed with the company and the quality of their products. So if you’re looking for an awesome gift for Dad this Father’s Day, I highly recommend the diskAshur2!

The 2TB diskAshur2 in Fiery Red is available for £289, which is $369.52 USD – yes, they ship internationally! The drive is available in a variety of sizes and price points, so there’s something for every need. To learn more, be sure to visit iStorage-UK.com and follow them on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube!