ADATA Showed Off An SSD At Computex That Only Unlocks With Your Smartphone

At the Computex 2026 trade show, ADATA brought several interesting new products, but the main thing that caught visitors' eyes was a tiny device called the ADATA Urban Tapsafe. This external SSD, about the size of a key fob, features an extremely unusual — if not innovative — function: you can only access the data on it via your phone's NFC.

Most people are used to using NFC on their smartphones to pay for purchases or tap through metro gates, but ADATA is using this short-range wireless standard to solve a different problem — physical security for an external drive. When you plug the drive into a computer, it's locked and doesn't show up in the system. To get to your files, the owner literally just needs to tap their phone against the drive's casing. A built-in chip reads the signal, and after successful authentication through the ADATA mobile app, the internal storage becomes visible to the operating system. And this drive-phone pairing works both ways: as soon as the SSD is disconnected from the PC (for example, if you yank the cable), it automatically locks.

A key feature of this system is that you can pair a single SSD with up to nine different devices. The owner can grant access to coworkers, friends, or family, setting different permission levels for each — read-only, or edit and write new files. This approach solves several everyday problems at once: there's no risk of someone getting hold of your laptop, plugging in a flash drive, and copying your files. Separately, ADATA reps touched on the memory market situation.

In terms of raw specs, the drive doesn't lag behind either. It's based on a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface with 20 Gbps bandwidth, delivering read and write speeds of up to 1900 MB/s. That's plenty for editing 4K video directly from the drive without having to move projects to your computer's internal SSD. The Urban Tapsafe's casing is made from 50% recycled plastic. The device weighs about 73 grams, measures 68.68 x 36.18 x 19.18 mm, and comes in two capacities — 1 TB and 2 TB.

At ADATA's booth, besides the Urban Tapsafe, you could spot several other interesting devices. For example, the ADATA Novakey RAM — when powered off, it looks like a plain black stick, but when running inside a PC, it creates an "infinite mirror" visual effect with soft edge lighting. In terms of specs, these are high-speed DDR5 modules with frequencies up to 8000 MT/s and capacities up to 32 GB per stick. Also spotted was the URBAN POCKET ELITE — an external SSD with read speeds up to 4000 MB/s and write speeds up to 3600 MB/s, almost entirely made from recycled materials: 50% recycled aluminum and 85% PCR plastic.

No word yet on exact pricing. However, it's known that sales of the Urban Tapsafe drive are scheduled to start in the second half of 2026.

Do you think this technology is a convenient replacement for passwords and biometrics, or are you not yet ready to trust it with your personal data? Share your thoughts in the comments.