Integral Splash 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive

Integral Splash 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive – Review

Published by Sierra Monica B. on September 13, 2009 under Product Reviews and Giveaways

The pink USB flash drive we are reviewing today comes from Mobile Fun, an online place where you can find lots of cool cell phone accessories in various categories.
The model named the Integral Splash 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive is a great mobile accessory coming with no less than 8GB of storage capacity, Windows ReadyBoost support, as well as a built-in encryption and compression software.

Coming in a pink soft-touch rubberized casing, the USB flash drive is both shock-resistant and waterproof, while enabling reading speeds of up to 12MB/s and writing speeds of 3MB/s. It has a small size 70 x 9 x 18 mm at 20 grams to occupy just a little space in your computer ports area.
The keychain stores the cap and you can check to see if the stick is in file transfer mode by looking at the flashing red LED light. You also can use the keychain to attach the drive to the keyring and have your files with you wherever you go, without worrying that it could get scratches.

Like any other USB flash drive it is automatically detected by the computer as you plug it in one of the free USB ports, requiring no special software installation, and is backward compatible with USB 1.1. Still it has some advanced features not enabled in common flash drives, such as the security and compression software called SecretZip.

SecretZip is a smart software with an easy-to-use interface that you don’t need to install on your computer. It performs the compression, decompression, encryption and decryption directly from the USB drive while connected to the computer.
It allows you to drag-and-drop files in its interface and encrypt them using password protection. The encrypted files are then saved on your computer and you can transfer them on the USB flash drive. You’ll need to use the same software when you’ll want to decrypt them.
The benefits of this feature include having the possibility to store more than 8GB of data and if it happens to lose the drive, or someone steals it, the encrypted files become inaccessible as the other person won’t know what password to enter.

Check the screenshots below with the steps to compress and encrypt a few documents in a single file that was transferred on the flash drive.

Encrypting files and transferring them to the USB flash drive:

Decrypting files from the USB flash drive using SecretZip:

Using SecretZip for zipping files:

The USB flash drive writing speed:

Included on the flash drive is the SecretZip Manual that teaches you how to add files and folders to archive, how to zip archives, encrypt single, multiple or zipped files, as well as how to unzip and decrypt them.

Windows ReadyBoost is another useful feature supported only by computers running Windows Vista and Windows 7. It practically uses your USB drive’s non-volatile flash memory as a memory cache to boost the system performance, eliminating the need for adding extra RAM memory to the computer.

You can rely on this capability introduced by Microsoft in Windows Vista in cases when your computer’s RAM memory is insufficient, or you feel that the system is less responsive.
ReadyBoost is based on Windows SuperFetch, a smart technology that allows files and applications to load faster.
For a USB flash drive to be ReadyBoost-compliant it has to meet the following requirements: minimum 230 MB free, 2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads, 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes, and 250 cache after formatting.

After using the Integral Splash 8GB USB flash drive I can say I am very satisfied with its features and would recommend it to everyone looking for a solution to transport a large amounts of data securely.
You can get it in pink, blue, black or yellow from Mobile Fun for a reasonable price of £23.45.

The review is the personal opinion of Ladies’ Gadgets based on the experience with the sample product sent by MobileFun, which is the only compensation we received.