Stompsoft Portable Vault review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 24 Aug 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: David Ludlow

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

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USB keys and portable hard disks are a useful way of carrying data around, but should you lose one, all your data is left lying around for the person that finds it.

With StompSoft's Portable Vault, you can encrypt data written to your portable storage to prevent unauthorised access. The software is installed on your PC and is accessed through a client application that doesn't need to be installed.

This means there's no fancy Windows integration, but you can run the client on any PC and access your encrypted data, which is the whole point of having portable storage in the first place. The client, which prompts you for your password when you launch it, is easy to use and lets you create your own folder structure. You can drag files and folders into it using Windows Explorer. Copying files to your drive is slower than a standard file copy, as they're automatically encrypted with 256-bit Blowfish encryption.

If you look at your drive using Windows Explorer, you'll spot a new folder called Vault, which is full of gibberish; this is where Portable Vault stores your encrypted files. Be careful not to delete it, as this will wipe out your encrypted data. As the software uses the standard storage area on your USB key, your encrypted data can take up as much room as you've got. We've reviewed some USB storage devices that offer secure partitions before, but these require you to set the size of the secure partition when you create them, so they're less flexible. The client software has a backup utility built in, so you can keep a copy of your secure vault and restore it to the same or another drive in case of any problems.

For less than £10, Stompsoft's Portable Vault is a great way to safely protect all your valuable data while using your existing removable storage.

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