Iolo Drive Scrubber
Drive Scrubber is a drive erase utility – whether it be hard drive, flash drive or even a camera card – which securely deletes all the data on a drive in such a way that it can’t ever be recovered. It’s a good way to securely give away old drives – or even junk them if you must – without the risk of any of your private or sensitive information getting into the wrong hands.
Pros: Drive scrubber is nicely configurable – you can choose to delete just the free space from a drive, or even boot from the CD to wipe a virus-infected system completely – and it has plenty of warnings along the way about losing data, which makes it virtually impossible for you to ‘accidentally’ wipe your information.
Cons: As with most drive deletion utilities, even on small drives it can be quite slow. A test 32G USB drive took several hours to securely wipe, for example.
Rating: 4/5 – A secure but slow utility for protecting personal data and cleaning drives.
SanDisk Mobile Ultra 8G
SanDisk’s Mobile Ultra 8G looks rather like a chubby USB Flash Drive, but it’s actually two drives in one. The chubby part is essentially a USB reader for a tiny 8G MicroSDHC flash card, suitable for use in compatible smart-phones.
Pros: Data transfer speeds via USB were decent – roughly 16.1 Mbps read and 12.9Mbps write – and the ease with which you can switch the Micro SDHC card in and out of a phone makes data transfers particularly easy.
Cons: It’s very light and very tiny, two factors that make it incredibly easy to lose – I misplaced it twice just during my testing alone. The lightness also makes it a little less durable than many other USB flash drives, and users will need to be careful with it.
Rating: 4/5 – A great mobile data solution for smart-phone users.