Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 50 Overview
Once out of the packaging, I was able to get a better look and feel for the Vault Privacy 50. The bright blue metal body found on the drive and protective endcap has a nice satin finish, with a few black plastic accents on the device ends and along the sides of the drive lengthwise. With the the endcap on the drive, you end up with an object that has the shape and dimensions of a small pack of gum.
The bright blue body of the VP50C has IronKey branding on the front, along with a capacity designation (64GB for our review sample), as well as a small LED indicator for drive activity. At one corner of the body of the drive is a hole that allows you to attach the included lanyard if you so choose. The backside of the drive features Kingston branding, as well as model information and a few standard certification logos.
The cap of the drive can be removed and stored on the end of the drive so that you don’t lose it while the drive is in use. I like this feature, but found that the cap was prone to coming off on both ends of the drive. This happened to me multiple times while the drive was in my pocket or being carried in a laptop bag.
Setup
The Vault Privacy 50 does not come with a user-manual, and the Kingston site doesn’t have a user-guide or manual available either. There is however a great setup video on their website and YouTube channel, which I have embedded below. While the drive is pretty straightforward, I think it would be a great addition to the drive to include a user-manual or guide of some sort either with the drive or listed on the back of the package.
Before we start using the drive, I wanted to mention the cap again, as I feel like this could be an issue on the long run. The cap simply doesn’t stay on the drive very well, and I have concerns that it can come off in your pocket or laptop bag and cause damage to the USB Type-C connector. These connections are smaller than Type-A, and the way it sticks out from the end of the drive is just asking for it to be snapped off. Kingston should definitely look into securing the cap in a better manner, and I know they can do it, because I have another drive of theirs in the same form factor that doesn’t have this issue, but is also designed slightly different. With that out of the way, let’s move over to actually using the drive.
Once you plug in your drive, which is both PC and Mac compatible, you will be presented with the option to run an executable in order to get started with the setup of the Vault Privacy 50. In my review system, I needed to open the IronKey Unlocker file system in File Explorer in order to start the setup process. As you can see, the VP50C shows up in this window as “USB Drive (J:)”, but no information is available for the drive itself.
The fist screen will request you to set your preferred language.
Next up you will need to accept the license agreement for the drive.
As mentioned earlier, the VP50 supports both a User account, as well as an Admin account. Each of these access types support either Complex or Passphrase protection, but the same setting must be used for each access type. Complex passwords must be 6-16 characters long, include both upper and lowercase letters, a numerical digit, as well as a special character. You can also provide a password hint if you would like.
Selecting the Passphrase option lessens the character requirements, but does increase the minimum to 10, with a maximum of 64.
I chose to create both a User and Admin password, and you can see their configurations below.
Once the passwords have been set, you can then enter in any contact information you would like. This information can be viewed within the IronKey application without the drive being unlocked, which can help with getting the physical drive back should it be lost or stolen.
After the drive has been setup, you will now be able to access the drive storage via File Explorer as shown below.
There is also an application available in the taskbar that allows you to make a few changes to the drive should you wish to.
As the Admin, you can change your password on the first tab.
The Contact Info tab is where you can make changes to this publicly viewable information.
The Language tab lets you change the language of the application.
Admin Options allows for changing the User password, as well as setting the drive to Read-Only and requiring a new password at login.
