Kingston DataTraveler DT2000

The DataTraveler series from Kingston has been around for longer and indeed shares its DNA with very similar hardware-encrypted USB drives from other companies, including CORSAIR and SecureData. These drives are all licensed from ClevX's DataLock KP series, which is as close to an OEM as any in this field. Kingston's versions come in a plastic pouch, which is of the irritating type, needing a sharp knife to cut open as it is shaped around the USB drive on the front to showcase it fully. The company and product name are also on the front, alongside salient specifications and more features and a super quick start guide on the back.


At 80 mm x 20 mm x 10.5 mm, the Kingston DataTraveler DT2000 is larger-than-average for a USB drive as a result of the onboard alphanumeric keypad for the built-in hardware encryption. It comes packaged in two pieces, a sleeve with the product name and Kingston logo on the two sides, and the drive itself with a keyring already attached. The two pieces have an aluminium casing with a bright metallic blue finish. The drive's storage capacity is mentioned on the end by the keyring, which also has an O-ring for an IP57 rating as far as dust and fluid resistance goes. There is a blue LED on this end for drive activity, and two other LEDs on the other end to denote lock/unlock when in use, as well as a few other things this drive is capable of. The iStorage mark on the bottom is extremely weird and to an extent confusing in terms of how much Kingston has added to the product given iStorage is another customer of ClevX that sells the datAshur PRO.


Given the drive has an internal battery to help with all the onboard programming features, you may want to plug it in and leave it running for a while (Kingston recommends 30 minutes for the first time) to ensure a fully charged battery. The drive does not lose any programmed security settings or the pin codes if the battery runs out because these are written to an onboard memory module. It features full-disk AES 256Bit hardware encryption across any OS that supports a male USB Type A 3.1 Gen 1 port, which is to say you can use it with Windows, macOS, Linux, or even ChromeOS, for that matter. Everything being onboard also means no software drivers or firmware updates to worry about, and it is FIPS 140-2 Level 3 compliant to keep your friendly neighborhood IT admin happy.


Using the DataTraveler DT2000 is simple for all the day-to-day functions, and yet there are a plethora of onboard programmability options that would rival a keyboard from Ducky or Vortexgear. Unlocking the drive is as simple as pressing the lock key, entering the default pin within 10 seconds (11223344), and pressing the lock key again. The red and green LEDs at the top flash and change status accordingly, as seen in the instruction set above. But then the drive offers the end user the capability to set up more privacy features, including an admin-only mode, read-only mode, and timeout mode, all of which help keep the chain of command of the sensitive data as much in your control as you wish it to be. There is a comprehensive user manual available online which goes through these features in multiple languages, and I highly recommend reading through it initially, and perhaps a few more times as you get used to the drive.

Given all the available options, which all happen to be hardware-based, you may run the risk of forgetting your pin, the admin pin, user pin, and so on. My point is that there are quite a few numbers to be aware of, with a minimum of a single pin that is 7–15 digits in length without any repeating or consecutive numbers. The presence of an alphanumeric keypad does help in using letters instead of a series of numbers, but keep in mind that the drive has brute force detection as with the Ironkey DT300 and will delete all data after 10 incorrect attempts. Depending on the types of pins set, they may get reset to a default configuration as well. There is also a way to reset the drive entirely without going through this process if you plan to no longer use it and want to hand it over to someone else, for example. For all this and more read the manual as I did.


This is an older drive with older hardware, which shows in the performance tests. Kingston rates this 32 GB variant at 135 MB/s read and 40 MB/s write in USB 3.1 Gen 1 mode, and 30 MB/s read and 20 MB/s write in USB 2.0 mode. As before, these numbers mean little without more context on the testing methodology. For what it is worth, seen above is a representative CrystalDiskMark 5 result summary for a 1 GB dataset in x64 operation on an Intel Z390-based system with Windows 10 OS and native USB 3.1 Gen 1 support via the chipset. Writing multiple gigabytes of consequent data did result in severe slowdown with this drive showing its read and write limitations relative to the others when copying files large and small alike.

The Kingston DataTraveler DT2000 series comes in 4–64 GB size offerings and costs between $58.50–$162.50, with this specific 32 GB D300S coming in at $130 from the Kingston store and official resellers alike. I would personally go with the Ironkey offering for an additional $30, if only for the more compact and discrete look and more software-based options, but as clearly seen by the various companies selling them, there is a large market for keypad USB drives.