Kanguru's eSATA flash drive is a nice shape and size, about the same dimensions as a pack of gum, but only half as thick. It also has a sleek black finish. One cool feature is that when transferring data to or from the drive, the eSATA connector emits a red band of light and the USB side glows blue.
The one thing that immediately turned me off about the drive was the end caps covering the eSATA and USB connectors. I found them flimsy, and the eSATA cap has a lanyard protruding through it, which I guess keeps you from losing one of the caps, but also makes it somewhat awkward when trying to plug it into the laptop. Kanguru, however, assured me that they are correcting that "design flaw" and will be removing the lanyard from the cap and body and reinforcing the cap as well.
My first test of the drive involved transferring a big, ugly 4GB folder consisting of 1,653 files with 85 JPEG photos and a dozen short videos. The data transfer using the eSATA port took 10 minutes, 4 seconds; using the USB port, it took exactly 15 minutes.
The HD Tach tests with eSATA connectivity showed blazing fast speeds. The drive's average read speed was 70.9MB/sec. It had a sequential read speed of 62MB/sec. to 78MB/sec., a burst speed of 80.3MB/sec. and random access time of about .4 milliseconds. CPU utilization was extraordinary, with a low 2% usage. Turning the thumb drive around, I tested it again using the USB connector, and the drive provided an outstanding average read speed of 29MB/sec., a sequential read speed of 30MB/sec., a burst speed of 32MB/sec. and a random access time of .7 seconds. This drive rocked the throughput tests.
By comparison, we've ever tested at Computerworld was the IronKey Secure, which had an average read speed of 29.6MB/sec., a burst speed of 31MB/sec. and a 22% CPU utilization rate. But a basic IronKey flash drive with 8GB capacity will set you back $299. Sure, you're paying for iron-clad encryption technology, but if you're not working for the NSA or MI6, just download a free copy of PGPDisk encryption software and secure your data that way. You will need to have PGP's Desktop product installed on your computer.