What, secure?! You have to be an administrator!

I am giving this unit the lowest possible score for the reasons below. The fact that this is product by Lexar is actually named "Secure" invokes the belief it really is secure. However, I have been discussing this with Lexar for over two weeks now, without resolution.

The problem is that the Encrypted Vault (the reason I purchased the thing) is not available except when signed in as an administrator. Hello??!! Why would Lexar build a unit that is smaller than some earrings my girlfriend wears if they did not expect it to be used as a portable device, meaning it would be used in many different computers? So, if you go to the library, or at work on a network, or at your friend Billy's house, and you are not the administrator, YOU LOSE! The only way around this is to put your most sensitive material right on the public drive, and not use the secure features of the drive. Does that make sense?

I was sent the software version by Lexar with no improvement, and have tried all of their  more

What, secure?! You have to be an administrator!

I am giving this unit the lowest possible score for the reasons below. The fact that this is product by Lexar is actually named "Secure" invokes the belief it really is secure. However, I have been discussing this with Lexar for over two weeks now, without resolution.

The problem is that the Encrypted Vault (the reason I purchased the thing) is not available except when signed in as an administrator. Hello??!! Why would Lexar build a unit that is smaller than some earrings my girlfriend wears if they did not expect it to be used as a portable device, meaning it would be used in many different computers? So, if you go to the library, or at work on a network, or at your friend Billy's house, and you are not the administrator, YOU LOSE! The only way around this is to put your most sensitive material right on the public drive, and not use the secure features of the drive. Does that make sense?

I was sent the software version by Lexar with no improvement, and have tried all of their  more

Amazing product!

This flash drive has served me very well. It's fast, reliable, and survived a trip through the washing machine and dryer with all data and functionality intact. I use it frequently with a Windows XP machine and an OS X machine. Buy this drive! You won't regret it.

Glitch Using ThumbDrive

I've had several Lexar Secure II thumb drives. I purchase them because you can encrypt your data. Not many other thumb drive makers provide encryption software in their thumb drive. All of my Lexar drives worked fine initially, for about a month, then eventually a glitch shows up in all of them. This same glitch occurs when inserting the thumb drive in both my desktop and laptop computers, so I guess that the glitch is probably in the thumb drive, not the computers.
The glitch is that I am unable to "Safely Remove the Hardware" when I click on the drive removal icon at the lower right hand corner of the screen. I am force to do an "unsafe" removal by simply pulling the thumb drive out. I believe that this technique may be corrupting some files in my computer to the point that often I get the "blue screen of death" when I shut down. This "blue screen of death" probably occurs because the computer is unable to remove the thumb drive when it is trying to shut down.
I do not have removal problems  more

Encryption is not for Macs yet, not for Windows domains

I bought this because I wanted an encrypted device that I could use to offload personal documents I receive while traveling for work, and then read them using my Mac(s) at home. Lexar JD II is the only product I found advertised to work with both Macs and PCs at the same time.

My primary Mac is an Intel Mac. Early on I realized the encryption utility only runs on PPC Macs. Okay, so I figured I'd use it on the PPC Mac Mini, and everything seeemed fine at first.

Then I hit a problem where my Mac Mini could not read video DVDs. A little search on the Mac support forums, and I found that installing Lexar JD software disables video DVD support on my Mac! Fortunately there were instructions on how to uninstall.

Aside from the problems with the Macs, I also hit the problem another reviewer mentioned, which is that you must be logged in as a LOCAL administrator to use the encryption software under Windows. Since my work PC is a member of a domain, I had to create a local account,  more

Encryption is not for Macs yet, not for Windows domains

I bought this because I wanted an encrypted device that I could use to offload personal documents I receive while traveling for work, and then read them using my Mac(s) at home. Lexar JD II is the only product I found advertised to work with both Macs and PCs at the same time.

My primary Mac is an Intel Mac. Early on I realized the encryption utility only runs on PPC Macs. Okay, so I figured I'd use it on the PPC Mac Mini, and everything seeemed fine at first.

Then I hit a problem where my Mac Mini could not read video DVDs. A little search on the Mac support forums, and I found that installing Lexar JD software disables video DVD support on my Mac! Fortunately there were instructions on how to uninstall.

Aside from the problems with the Macs, I also hit the problem another reviewer mentioned, which is that you must be logged in as a LOCAL administrator to use the encryption software under Windows. Since my work PC is a member of a domain, I had to create a local account,  more

Comments on Secure II

I have been using this product for a month, and so far I am happy with it. The drive is so small for the amount of data I can carry arund, so I am afraid to lose it. For that, the SECURE II gives me a great sense of security.

SECURE II is about 9MB. It is saved in the drive just like any other files you will save, and is not protected in anyway from accidental deletion. So you have to be careful not to delete it along with other unwanted files or reformatting. First thing I did was to make a backup of the entire folder in my PC. SECURE II runs without any installation in your computer. It can create vault areas in the flash drive. For example, if you make a vault area called MYSPACE for a size of 500MB, you will find a file MYSPACE.LXV (size 500MB) created in SECURE II folder. Even if the vault is empty, the LXV file takes up 500MB and available space in the flash drive goes down to 1.5GB. Anything you save in the vault will be absorbed in the reserved 500MB space and will not  more