Apricorn Aegis Fortress 500GB Hardware Encrypted Portable Drive
Performance & Conclusion
Even with USB 3.0 interfaces, secure drives of this nature don’t perform too well in the performance front for obvious reasons. Encrypting data on the fly with AES 256 bit XTS encryption will certainly slow things down a notch. To kick things off, we’ll start off the benchmarks with ATTO Disk benchmark.
As the scores reveal the Aegis Fortress peaks in at 112MB/s read and 111MB/s write. Next we run Crystal Disk Mark which is another tool we use for drive benchmark tests.
Here too the results are comparable to results we got from ATTO disk benchmark with it achieving 112MB/s for both read and write speeds.
Conclusion
As the test results show, the Aegis Fortress isn’t the fastest portable drive you’ll find it the market. Since the hard drive models are 5400RPM drives, one couldn’t expect much performance advantage even though that isn’t the primary focus of this product. Had Apricorn opted to use a 7200RPM drive, we could expect slightly better results, though I’m unsure as to how adversely it’ll impact on price.
Nevertheless, Aegis Fortress is a well rounded product, with good build quality and average performance. Since its primary focus is on data security, it certainly does a good job at that. Setting up the drive is a breeze even though the underlying technology is quite complex. If you’re looking at this solution for large scale installations, Apricorn’s Aegis Configurator product will certainly come in handy. While there are other companies that have recently joined the data security bandwagon, Apricorn have been in the industry for decades, and I would certainly go with a company that has a solid reputation than a newcomer when it comes to data security.
Apricorn Aegis Fortress
Pros
- Military Grade Data Encryption
- Platform agnostic
- Easy setup
- Value for money
Cons
- Average performance
Apricorn Aegis Fortress
Pros
- Military Grade Data Encryption
- Platform agnostic
- Easy setup
- Value for money
Cons
- Average performance
