AnandTech: USB Flash Drive Roundup

Lexar JumpDrive Lightning

Lexar's only entry in this roundup is their top of the line JumpDrive Lightning. The high end Lightning drive is only available in two sizes: 1GB and 2GB.

Lexar advertises 256-bit AES encryption support, and is implemented similarly to Kingston's DataTraveler Elite. If you use Lexar's bundled tool to partition your drive into a secure and a public partition, anything stored on the secure partition goes through Lexar's 256-bit encryption engine. Lexar also offers support for you to encrypt individual files on your system, which can only be decrypted if you have your JumpDrive Lightning plugged into that system. Lexar improves functionality one step above and beyond Kingston by allowing you to mount both public and secure partitions at the same time, as separate drive letters.

The only downside to Lexar's drive is that the flash controller that Lexar uses does not have a hardware encryption engine, thus there is a significant performance penalty for reading/writing to your secure partition. The table below displays read/write speed for various file sizes to a Secure as well as a Public partition on the Lexar drive.

	0.5KB		32KB		256KB		2048KB		65536KB
	Read	Write	Read	Write	Read	Write	Read	Write	Read	Write
Secure	984	4	14809	279	16990	1903	17033	4881	17476	8738
Public	1000	69	19099	3507	26176	11750	26624	14131	26214	15292

As you can see, reads are noticeably slower to the secure partition, as are writes, especially at smaller file sizes. In many cases, the performance of reading/writing to the secure partition is far less than half of working with the public partition. It's a major downside to the security benefits that Lexar offers.

The Lexar drive is a bit more stylish than what Kingston has to offer, but the downside to that is, of course, that it shows fingerprints and smudges much like an iPod. Lexar includes a polishing cloth to remove the blemishes, which although it works very well, it is still a pain that you have to do it. The case of the JumpDrive Lightning adds significant weight to the unit, which is another expense that you pay in order to support the style of the drive.

If you purchase the drive from Lexar's online store, you can get a free engraving on the unit itself, which is a nice option that's offered.

Lexar JumpDrive Lightning
Sizes Available	512MB - 2GB
Lanyard Included	No
USB Extension Cable Included	No
Data Encryption	Yes (Windows only)
Password Protection	Yes (Windows Only)
Secure + Public Partitions Simultaneously Accessible	Yes
Flash Controller	?
Flash Memory	?
Warranty	Lifetime Limited

	$142.99
	$128.99