Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
Taking a look at the appearance of the Kingston IronKey Keypad 200 64GB, we have what appears to be an aluminum and plastic build. The build quality is quite good with its excellent rigidity. All edges are rounded off to prevent any scrapes or cuts. We find some branding on the main sides and on the end of the IronKey Keypad 200 64GB. The main metal portion has a nice blue finish accented with some black plastic. The dimensions of the drive itself are 78mm long, 18mm wide, and 8mm thick. When placing the case on top, each side is expanded by approximately 2mm. The drive weighs in at 17g on its own and 25g with the case on. This weight will likely not matter as you can attach it to your key chain easily with the loop on the end. The is IP57 certified, meaning it is dust resistant and waterproof up to 1m.
Taking a closer look at the IronKey Keypad 200 64GB, we find the USB 3.2 Gen 1 plug alongside the keypad. With a rated speed of 145MB/s read and 115MB/s write, it is no speed demon, but we are really focusing on the security provided by this hardware encrypted and hardware keypad design. There are three LEDs to indicate if the drive is locked, unlocked, and for setup. We will talk about the setup process shortly.
The setup process is fairly simple and can be found on the manufacturer’s website under the related videos section. There is no preset pin, so you must set your own PIN up before using the Kingston IronKey Keypad 200 64GB. To briefly explain the setup process, you press the key button once and wait for the red LED to stay solid and the green LED to flash. At this point, you can double press the key button to initiate the PIN setup as the blue LED flashes. There are three rules to the PIN: It must be 8 to 15 digits long, it cannot be repeating numbers, and it cannot contain a sequence of consecutive numbers. After this, you can press the key button twice again and confirm the PIN again while the unlock green LED blinks. Once confirmed, you can double press the key button and you will see a solid red then solid green LED to show the setup was successful. Now that the drive is set up, you can press the key button once and enter your PIN to access your IronKey Keypad 200 64GB for 30 seconds.
Kingston suggests you set up an admin PIN as well. This process starts by entering your pin, then holding down 1 and double pressing the key button. You will once again go through the previous steps. To use the admin pin, hold down 1 and press the key button. Whenever you enter the admin PIN to access your drive, you will have to re-setup a new user pin. Personally, I do not find this feature the most useful, as if I forgot my user pin, then I most likely forgot my admin PIN as well. Luckily, Kingston has thought about this and allows you to reset the IronKey Keypad 200 64GB by holding down 7 and pressing the key button until the red and green LEDs are alternating. After this, press 9 three times then hold 7. Next, press down the key button and release both buttons at the same time. Congratulations, you have just inserted a GameCube cheat code to reset your Keypad 200 64GB.
Because this drive focuses heavily on security, it has brute force hacking detection. When ten incorrect login attempts are made, the IronKey Keypad 200 64GB will commit a data and PIN purge. Once again, you will have to recreate a user PIN. Read only mode can be entered by entering your pin, then pressing the key button three times and the lights will blink green and blue. Proceed to press 7 then 6, followed by the key button. To exit read-only mode, do the same steps, but instead of pressing 6, press 9. As someone who has watched Kingston’s two videos on how to use this drive, I hope that this section of the review helps you navigate the IronKey Keypad 200 64GB, as I found the videos to be repetitive and convoluted. It would be much better to provide a single video that provides information in a more sequential order.
Overall, the Kingston, IronKey Keypad 200 64GB is a truly unique USB flash drive with a heavy focus on hardware security. There are several security features that can be utilized, given very specific situations. With all this in mind, how does this product perform against other USB flash drives in more traditional metrics? Keep reading the next five pages to find out!
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
CPU Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 622 Halo White
Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB Pro DDR4-3600 4x8GB
Graphics: MSI GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER VENTUS 8GB OC
Chassis: Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 Mesh V2
Power: FSP Hydro PTM+ 850W
Storage: Patriot Viper VPN100 512GB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro x64
Compared Hardware:
- Kingston IronKey Keypad 200 64GB
- ADATA DashDrive Elite UE700 64GB
- Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB
- Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G2 32GB
- Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy 3.0 32GB
- Kingston HyperX Fury 64GB
- Patriot Supersonic Magnum 64GB
- Patriot Supersonic Magnum 2 256GB
- Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 256GB
- Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime 1TB
- Patriot Supersonic Rage Pro 512GB
- SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB
- SanDisk Ultra Fit 256GB
- Silicon Power Blaze B05 64GB
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 8.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
7. Conclusion
