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Corsair Releases Speedy 128GB Voyager Flash Drive

Paul Lilly — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:19:27 -0500

All of a sudden we feel woefully inadequate waving around our 16GB and 32GB thumb drives. That's because Corsair on Thursday launched what it claims is the the world's fastest high capacity USB flash drive, the 128GB Flash Voyager GT.

"High performance is a key requirement for super-high capacity flash drives, such as the 128GB Voyager GT, simply because it is able to store such a large volume of data," said John Beekley, the VP of Applications at Corsair. "The 128GB Voyager GT is nearly twice as fast as other high-capacity flash drives, which means less time waiting for your music, video, or office files to copy to and from the drive."

According to Corsair, the MLC-based drive can hit read speeds of up to 32MB/s and write speeds of up to 25.6MB/s thanks to the Voyager's dual-controller architecture. The company also says you're more likely to run into bottlenecks with your USB 2.0 bus or OS system overhead before the drive loses its pep.

All that speed and capacity doesn't come cheap, however. The 128GB Voyager GT is available now with a street price of around $400.

Image Credit: Corsair

Edge Tech Taking Pre-Orders on 128GB USB Flash Drive

Paul Lilly — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:30:24 -0500

In what we hope becomes a trend, another manufacturer this week has stepped up to the storage plate with a 128GB USB flash drive, this one from Edge Tech. The company will make an official announcement next week, but has given us the skinny on their fat capacity drive.

Dubbed DiskGO, Edge Tech says its 128GB thumb drive can store approximately 85,000 photos, 128 hours of video, 32,000 MP3s, or over a million documents. Keeping all that data secure is a combination of a "rugged aluminum casing" and CryptArchiver Lite encryption software. The Lite version allows users to encrypt up to 25MB of data using 128-bit AES encryption, while the full version ups the ante to 32GB and either 256-bit AES or 448-bit Blowfish.

But what some might find far more appealing than its feature-set is the price. Edge Tech has priced the 128GB DiskGO at $390, which is about $150 less than Kingston's recently announced DataTraveler.

You can pre-order the DiskGO direct from Edge Tech, with shipments to start on July 31st.

Image Credit: Edge Tech

Kingston Releases First 128GB Flash Thumb Drive

Paul Lilly — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:07:46 -0500

Yesterday, the largest USB flash drives on the planet checked in at 64GB. Today, Kingston claims the capacity crown with the release of its DataTraveler 200 (DT200), the world's first 128GB USB flash drive that's twice the capacity of yesterday's biggest thumb drives.

"The new DT200's robust storage capability lets consumers store complete libraries of music, photos, and videos.," said Andrew Ewing, USB business manager at Kingston. "It is also a great tool for business users who carry around large databases or files."

Also available in 32GB and 64GB capacities, the DT200 series boasts read and write speeds of up to 20MB/s and 10MB/s, respectively. Other features include a capless design and password protection.

No word yet on availability, however pricing has been set at $120 (32GB), $213 (64GB), and $546 (128GB). Ouch!

Image Credit: Kingston

CSX 128GB SSD

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:20:35 -0500

As the price of NAND flash memory drops to record lows, more and more hardware vendors are getting into the solid state drive business—and why wouldn’t they? A standard hard drive has lots of moving parts, but a solid state drive is nothing more than a few NAND flash modules, a controller chip, some PCB, and an enclosure. CSX is well known in Europe as a producer of aftermarket RAM for Apple products, and its Diablo gaming RAM has started making waves in the United States. But this 128GB multilevel cell (MLC) SSD marks the company’s first foray into the solid state market.

Single-level cell (SLC) SSDs typically have better write speeds than multilevel cell drives, but MLCs are more common because they’re much cheaper. We’ve tested a few standout MLCs, including Intel’s X-25M, but most of the multilevel cell drives we’ve benchmarked have suffered from poor write speeds.

The CSX SSD’s read performance of 114MB/s is second only to that of Intel’s X25-M, which clocked in at 206.6MB/s. However, write performance, at 25.58MB/s, is only slightly better than that of bottom-of-the-barrel drives from RiData and Super Talent (reviewed as part of our SSD roundup, http://tinyurl.com/9qvwyd). It’s no match for SLC drives like Memoright’s MR25.2-032/64S (http://tinyurl.com/9jnjqg), but, more importantly, it doesn’t come close to reaching the 100MB/s write time the company’s literature claims the drive can achieve.

The CSX garnered the worst Premiere Pro score of any SSD we’ve tested and a PCMark Vantage score that puts it firmly in the middle of the pack—it’s better than RiData’s Ultra-S Plus and Super Talent’s MasterDrive DX, worse than the other drives in our roundup, but not even close to our reigning champion: the Intel X-25. Large-file (greater than 504MB) random-access write times were similarly poor at 107.7ms, with max latency at nearly a full second and average large-file latency hitting 218.8ms. The Intel X25-M, by contrast, has an average random-access write speed of just .09ms.

A peek under the hood of this drive revealed the same JMicron JMF602 controller that’s used in other write-crippled drives, such as Super Talent’s MasterDrive DX and OCZ’s Core. Most SSD manufacturers have stopped using this controller; we hope CSX will do the same in future iterations of the drive.

Super Talent Launches 128GB SSD for $300

Paul Lilly — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:52:17 -0500

Super Talent continues to push its presence in the SSD market whether you're ready to invest in the technology or not. Earlier this month the company put the focus on the higher end by launching the MLC-based MasterDrive OX series with read and write speeds of 150MB/sec and 100MB/sec respectively. Price points ranging from $149 for the 32GB model to $419 for a 128GB drive means the drives aren't likely to attract many budget minded consumers, but Super Talent's new MasterDrive LX line might.

These new drives will set its sights squarely on those tempted by SSD technology but without the big bucks for higher end models. Lower prices comes at the expense of performance, however, and the MasterDrive LX 64GB and 128GB drop the read and write speeds to 100MB/sec and 40MB/sec.

"The MasterDrive LX is our most cost-effective SSD yet. However, we've made no compromises in quality and reliability," said Super Talent director of marketing Joe James.

Good thing too, because the new drives will only carry a 1-year warranty. Then again, if Samsung's latest PR stunt is any indication (check it out here), you have nothing to worry about anyway.

MSRP has been set to $179 for the 64GB and $299 for the 128GB.

Image Credit: Super Talent

Samsung Begins Mass Producing 128GB SSDs

Paul Lilly — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:49:46 -0500

According to Fujitsu, flash memory currently has no place outside of handheld gadgets, a situation it doesn't see changing within the next two years. But despite Fujitsu's short-term reservations, other manufacturers seem intent on pushing SSD storage into the mainstream posthaste. Both Super Talent and OCZ have recently announced lower cost SSDs, and now Samsung is getting into the fray by saying it has begun mass producing 1.8- and 2.5-inch 64GB and 128GB multi-level cell (MLC)-based SSDs.

"With the 64GB and 128GB MLC SSDs, we are satisfying the density requirements of most business users and many PC enthusiasts, who will appreciate not only the performance gains and added reliability, but also the more attractive pricing," said Gerd Schauss, Director of Memory Marketing EMEA, Samsung Semiconductor Europe.

Throwing a wet blanket over the announcement are somewhat comparatively underwhelming performance numbers. Samsung claims its MLC based SSD has a write speed of 70MB/sec and a read speed of 90MB/s, which not only pales in comparison to some of the faster single-cell SSDs on the market, but lags behind Western Digital's VelociRaptor HDD. That might make the new SSDs a tough sell to PC enthusiasts with money to burn, but depending on how 'attractive' Samsung plans to price the units, it could capture a portion of the bang/buck crowd, a market segment SSDs aren't used to seducing.

Image Credit: Samsung