iStorage diskashur DT2 12TB Review

TweakTown's Rating: 81%

The Bottom Line

The DT2 is an incredibly secure high capacity solution for those needing an extra bit of protection in their life, on the downside it has a huge price tag that many wont find feasable.

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We are getting more familiar with iStorage products as the year moves forward, back in March we had the opportunity to check out the diskashur2 while today we shift gears to the DT2 lineup, a desktop encrypted drive solution with plenty of capacity.

The DT2 12TB is the highest capacity desktop solution offered by iStorage. It features USB 3.1 for connectivity along with pin-authentication and real-time 256bit AES XTS encryption. It's platform and device independent and relies only on its USB port and your 7-15-digit PIN, no software needed. The DT2 at its heart operates via a hardware-based microprocessor that is CC EAL4+ ready with physical protection mechanisms to prevent tampering or otherwise bypassing the security of the drive by entering a deadlock frozen state automatically.

As mentioned above, the diskashur DT2 is compatible with all platform featuring a USB port. MSRP for the 12TB solution comes in at 699 GBP or roughly $919 USB with a two-year warranty.

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Packaging for the diskashur DT2 is displayed to the right, capacity on the seal is on the left with marketing information in between.

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The delivery package includes the drive, power adapter and USB cable. We also have drive security software from ESET and Nero backitUp included.

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The front of the drive issues a 13-button keypad, soft to touch and not much tactile feel to them. The enclosure is full aluminum with plastic endcaps.

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Taking a look at the I/O we have a Kensington lock slot to the left followed by USB 3.0 and power input.

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Usable capacity of the 12TB diskashur DT2 comes in at 10.9 TB. It is formatted with the exFAT filesystem.

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A quick performance test gives us a solid 262 MB/s read and 256MB/s write.

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Looking at performance over file size, the DT2 does quite well from 16m through 512k after which it starts to decline.

As of this writing, I've had the DT2 in-house for about a month using it as my personal storage device carrying my backups of media and documents. For me build quality has been superb, with the metal enclosure certainly lending to that, the pin pad has had no issues to mention as far as durability or tactile feel is concerned. As an external HDD, the DT2 is the perfect fit for a desktop but isn't too big if you wanted to travel with it, dimensions reaching 185 x 112 x 43, about the same as a standard 3.5" drive enclosure.

Performance of the drive is fantastic both in benchmarking and daily use and as a note my unit was using an IronWolf 12TB from Seagate. That said the drive offered 262 read and 256 MB/s write and further does really well larger file sizes 512k through 16m.

As far as functionality is concerned, setup was pretty simple with my past experience with encrypted drives. We powered on the solution and after a set of red blue and green lights, we entered the default factory code giving us the green light and access to the drive. At this point, it is wise to go through the steps and change the code, instructions are included for that.

After you are all set, it's as simple as punching the code when you need to access the drive for adding or removing data. The drive has automated security to lock the drive if left unattended along with several commands for drive reset, self-destruct and data at rest if ever needed. On top of all of this iStorage has certified the DT2 as IP56 for dust and water intrusion making this one hell of a device for those wanting to protect their data!

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z370 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: Intel Core i3 8350K (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB 4x8GB DDR4 3200 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Air 540 (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)
• Wi-Fi NIC: ASUS PCE-AC88 (buy from Amazon)
• 10Gbe NIC: ASUS XG-C100C (buy from Amazon)
• Thunderbolt 3: ASUS Thunderbolt EX3 (buy from Amazon)