Using the CRU-DataPort SecureDock is simple. You just plug in the power to the SecureDock, connect it to your computer via either USB 2.0 or eSATA, load it with the DataPort 10 Secure Drive Carrier which has your hard drive, and you’re almost ready to use it. For some reason, the power switch on the back of the device had no effect on anything so I just left it in the “on” position.

Using one of the keys on the lock actually turns the device on and off. Initially, a red LED glows to let you know that you still need to insert one of the three security keys into the mini-USB port.

Upon inserting the security key, the other two LEDs light up and the bottom LED becomes green. At this point, you may even remove the security key.

The beauty of the SecureDock is that it is invisible to the user. Therefore, you only have to configure the hard drive manually to format and partition it however you want.

Once that’s done, you’re free to use the hard drive.

For testing the performance of the drive, I decided to use HD Tune, HD Tach, and ATTO Disk Benchmark. The tests were done for three different cases:

Encryption enabled, USB 2.0
Encryption enabled, eSATA
Encryption disabled, SATA

For the first two cases with encryption enabled, I used the SecureDock with either USB 2.0 or eSATA. For the encryption disabled case, I took the hard drive out of the Drive Carrier and connected it to my computer as an “internal” hard drive. This is to test both the effects of the interface used as well as to test the effect of encryption of performance.

For convenience, most of the results have been charted.

HD Tune

Firstly, we can see that USB 2.0 lags behind by a significant margin. Also, we note that that encryption has no effect on anything except for burst transfer rates, where it has a significant effect.

HD Tach

The HD Tach results tell a similar story. Without encryption, burst rates are almost double what they are with encryption.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The results from ATTO show the same trend, also for write speeds.

You can see them here for each case:
Encryption enabled, USB 2.0
Encryption enabled, eSATA
Encryption disabled, SATA

All in all, we can conclude that the encryption only has an effect on burst speeds. Otherwise, it is seamless when it comes to normal transfer rates. Also, it is best to use the eSATA interface if you can to maximize transfer rates. USB 2.0 is severely limited.

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