LaCie SAFE Mobile USB Hard Drive w/ Encryption 80GB

LaCie SAFE alongside with Mighty Mouse.
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LaCie SAFE Mobile fit snugly inside in the bundled pouch.

LaCie took all two of my frontal USB ports. :(

Triple DES Data Encryption
The concept of the SAFE Mobile is simple. LaCie's embedded fingerprint scanner digitalizes your fingerprints and encrypts them into individual keys, which are in other words your passwords. Next time someone tries to retrieve your data from the USB hard drive, he will be stopped at the authentication stage. If that guy goes nuts and crack open the case, the SAFE Mobile is already one step ahead since it already encrypts the data in Triple DES. So, unless he has access to super computers, it's doubtful he can reach the data in a timely fashion.

The storage specialist emphasizes on the 'Encryption' part on this model after the press unlocked the backdoor to the data on the previous SAFE Mobile. What they did was as simple as removing the drive from the case, installing it on another PC and then 'recovering' the hidden with some $24 utility. This discovery was an embarrassment to LaCie; hence, the new SAFE Mobile USB Hard Drive is shipping with a hardware-accelerated encryption engine that provides the much needed content protection.

When 56-bit DES key was found not enough to stand against brute force attacks, Triple DES becomes the solution to improve key security without switching to a new algorithm. The 56-bit DES is still an option, given your data isn't worth more than $250,000. Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1998 managed to crack DES in less than 3 days with this amount of funding. So, I guess it probably isn't worthwhile for your foes to find out the content inside of your SAFE hard drive if the value of the data is a lot less than quarter of a million dollars. Regardless, you can't go wrong with Triple DES as the performance plenty is just about 12 to 16%, as you'll find out later.

Getting Started
My primary reason for picking this LaCie SAFE for review is the hardware-based fingerprint authentication, meaning the USB hard drive is platform independent. (Supposedly, the drive should work under Linux. If someone could confirm this, I will post the results here.) The LaCie assistant software is for first-time setup and modifying users. The PC version is the exact replica of the Mac though the latter receives a Universal Binary upgrade along with some 'undocumented' TDES fixes. As soon you launch the SAFE drive assistant the first time, the software will ask you to enter and print out a 24-character long pass phrase, a backdoor in case your fingerprints are no longer recognizable. I recommend you put it in a real safe just in case.

24-character Pass Phrase... gah...

Print it out and put it in a safe.

Past that, you can select either 56-bit DES or Triple 128-bit DES. The former provides 'normal' security with speeds ranging from 25 to 27MB/s. The latter encryption is the one I suggested, though, speed is dragged down to between 20 and 21MB/s. After choosing the security mode, the software will in default create a FAT32 partition. It's not until you start transferring files to the LaCie SAFE Mobile that the encryption engine kicks in. You can format to other file tables such as NTFS or HFS+. You'll lose the cross-platform advantage, but at the same time, FAT32's inherent 4GB per file limitation goes away.

Hmm... DES or Triple DES

With the pass phrase created earlier, you can now create users, giving them either READ or READ/WRITE access. Each user will have to swipe two of their fingers over the sensor three times for verification. My only gripe with the assistant is all users have READ access to the same data. I would like to see more controls over the privileges, such as discrete partitions for different users and shared access among a few selected accounts.

Finger picking...

Swipe, swipe & swipe...

Oops... wrong finger.

Triple DES and Performance Trade-offs
Triple DES is notoriously slow, even with the help of a hardware-accelerated encryption engine. On my Intel Mac, QuickBench recorded 16.58MB/s and 15.54MB/s for sequential read and write respectively. This was about 12 to 16% slower than 56-bit DES's 19.84MB/s read and 17.71MB/s write. In reality tests, copying a 1GB file to the Mac took exactly 60s while sending back the same required 68s. The LaCie SAFE on Windows XP MCE 2005 completed the same transfers a few seconds faster on a Intel Core 2 Duo coupled with a P965 - notably the fastest USB controller available today. You can't disable the encryption so I couldn't verify original performance of the LaCie's 2.5" 5400-rpm IDE drive. Lastly, the SAFE Mobile did run reasonably quiet and cool despite heavy activties.

Triple DES QuickBench scores

56-bit DES QuickBench scores

Recaps
If you need to feel secure with your data on the go, the LaCie SAFE Mobile USB Hard Drive will do just that. Its triple DES encryption in addition to the proven biometric fingerprint technology is enough to deter most people from hacking attempts. Though, the trade-offs for this type of protection provided by the SAFE Mobile are sky-high pricing and slow transfer speeds.