Lexar JumpDrive Mercury Flash Drive Review

Using technology from E ink, the company that is behind the electronic paper displays used in Seiko Epson's wristwatch and Sony's Reader, the 10-bar capacity meter shows a high level of contrast that is easily visible in direct sunlight and requires virtually no power to run. Alongside the display are markers in 20% increments for quick reference, and underneath it is printed the total capacity of the drive. Below that, the square LED found on previous drives has been replaced by a smaller Lexar logo that flashes blue as data is transferred to and from the drive.

The JumpDrive Mercury's E ink capacity meter doesn't require you plug in to show space left on the device.

The capacity meter is controlled by the flash drive itself and is platform independent, meaning it will update regardless if you are using a Mac, PC or Linux computer. Despite it's resilience to pressure, I question the meter's lifespan due to the fact that Lexar offers a 1-year warranty on the display as opposed to the 2-year warranty for the drive itself. Of course, this is purely speculative, although it's still something to be aware of.

Safe and Secure
If security is a concern in your book, be comforted that Lexar includes their Secure II Dashboard software on the JumpDrive Mercury that I previously reviewed last November. In a nutshell, Dashboard supports creating encrypted vaults, encrypting individual files, and shredding files to make sure they aren't recoverable. This software is cross-platform, able to launch off the drive on any Mac running OS X 10.2.7+ or PC with Windows 2000/XP.

If you're logged onto the computer as an administrator, you have the ability to store your files in vaults, which are basically AES 256-bit encrypted disk images that can be mounted to any free drive letter and work as if there was a second flash drive plugged into the computer, although suffering from a performance loss. It should be noted that the v1.1 Mac driver that ships with the drive is only compatible with PowerPC-based Macintoshes, not the new Intel ones. A brief check on Lexar's update page shows a new 1.6 version that comes as a Universal Binary, although the download links are broken.

Online customer support was able to provide a download of the software, but only after 3 contact attempts and over an hour of waiting. To save you the hassle I endured, here's the real working link for v1.6 of both the Mac and Windows versions. Apart from supporting Intel Macs, the new version boosts the maximum vault size from 2GB to 20GB, has localizations in 7 languages, auto-update checking, and bumps the minimum system requirement for Mac users to 10.3.

Of course, if you don't have administrator rights on every machine or use an Intel Mac, then you can always encrypt individual files by simply dragging them into the Dashboard. Multiple files can also be processed at the same time using the same password. Unlike the vaults however, individually encrypted files must be decrypted first before you may access them.

When creating vaults or individually encrypted files, the Secure II software will rate your password's strength on-the-fly using an intuitive color-coded meter, so that potential crackers will have a harder time getting to your data. As an added bonus, if the password's strength is too low the Dashboard will not allow you to proceed, marking the death of using "12345" as your password.

Finally, the Dashboard supports file shredding to prevent file recovery. In plain English, when a file is deleted from your Recycle Bin, it's actually still available until data is written over it. Think of it like selling a house - it's still there after moving out until new tenants move in or a mini-mall is built on top of it. When using the Secure II shredder, the file's actual data will be written over multiple times to prevent recovery from one of the many utilities available on the market. The file shredder has the ability to securely delete files by dragging them into the dashboard or Quick Shredder that appears on top of all windows, securely delete all files from the recycle bin, or shred a disk's free space in the event you accidentally deleted an important document through the usual means.

SiSoftware Sandra Benchmark (Normal Partition)

SiSoftware Sandra Benchmark (Encrypted Partition)

Performance & Recap
Looking at the benchmark results below, you can see that the JumpDrive Mercury has close read speeds to those of the JumpDrive Secure II, however its write speeds are about 50% slower. While still fast enough for the average user, I was a bit disappointed to see Lexar's newer (and slightly more expensive) offering with half the speed of its predecessor. Average read and write speeds for the 64MB test were 9.6MBps and 4.3MBps respectively. When using the encrypted vault, these speeds were reduced to 6.4MBps and 3.2MBps, about a 33% performance drop well within reason.

Overall I am quite pleased with the Secure II drive. Although the write speeds are half those of last year's Secure II model, the capacity meter is a welcome addition for anyone with multiple flash drives and the cross-platform encryption software is second to none. With a MSRP of only $10 more than the Secure II and a street price $50 less than a competing flash drive with a capacity meter, the JumpDrive Mercury is highly recommended although speed freaks should look elsewhere.