Posted 08/14/09 at 09:19:27 AM by Paul Lilly

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.

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Posted 07/21/09 at 05:34:45 PM by Andy Salisbury

For those of you that are looking to carry around every piece of information that you might ever need (and most of your family photos) around with you in your pocket, Kingston has got the thumb drive for you.

With the recent introduction of their 256GB thumb drive, you’ll be able to take a plethora of files around with you everywhere you go. The drive itself packs a transfer speed of up to 20MB/sec and a read speed of 10MB/sec. And, if you’re using Vista, it also supports Windows ReadyBoost.

Though, this beast is only available in Europe and the UK for a whopping £565.67 ($931.60) upon custom order.

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Posted 04/29/09 at 10:08:26 PM by Pulkit Chandna

USB flash drives are meant to do a very simple job. Try telling that to manufacturers who apparently regard them as a canvas that should, from time to time, tolerate their whimsical artistic and technological cravings. Our beautiful planet has been blessed with USB flash drives of various ilks, be it the radical or the rank outrageous.

Ennova Direct has announced a new thumb drive that has enough room for a miniscule OLED screen/biometric scanner. The OLED screen can be used for file browsing and other ordinary functions. And for those of you who require thumb drives to house valuable state secrets, the OLED screen can function as a biometric scanner. The company expects to launch the drive in Q1, 2010.

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Posted 01/22/09 at 12:00:00 PM by Alex Castle

What’s a USB key good for? Carrying files from one computer to another? If you think that’s all, then you’re missing out. USB thumb drives can be used in almost all the ways a regular hard drive can, including storing all sorts of useful apps. We think that this presents a great opportunity for savvy PC users to keep their favorite programs at hand, no matter what computer they end up using.

In this article we’re going to show you a number of different loadouts for USB “tools.” With these on hand you’ll be able to do everything from checking your email to recovering data off a damaged hard drive on any computer you find yourself sitting in front of. We'll also show you a couple of cool tricks, like how to run a virtual, encrypted drive from a thumb drive, so gather up some of those spare USB keys you have lying around and read on.

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Posted 12/13/08 at 07:26:35 PM by Justin Kerr

eSATA ports are starting to become more mainstream in mid to low end motherboards, and OCZ thinks the time is right to start adding on non hard drive based peripherals. Its new lineup of memory sticks will do just that and come in 8, 16, and 32GB capacities. The new drives will both communicate and receive their power from the eSATA port. To ensure backwards compatibility they have also included a rear mounted mini USB connection which will allow users to plug the device into laptops or other USB only machines.

No official benchmarks are have been taken by us, but the company is reportedly boasting read speeds of up to 90MB/s, and writes speeds as fast as 30MB/s. No comment has yet been made on pricing, but it will likely be in the same ballpark as its USB brethren.

It certainly is an interesting idea, but I can’t help but wonder if this type of device is really necessary with USB 3.0 right around the corner. USB 3.0 has a maximum theoretical throughput of 4.8Gbps which would easily max out most flash memory keys several times over.

Would you be interested in an eSATA flash drive? Hit the jump and let us know.

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Posted 10/01/07 at 01:48:10 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

We’ve used too many Jack Bauer references lately, but c’mon, how could we review this key and not say it’s the one Jackie boy would use?

The 8GB Flash Survivor GT, after all, is shock and water resistant—and if your service automatic runs out of ammo, you can even fling its hard aluminum body at someone’s head. But how does it perform?

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Posted 07/03/07 at 02:02:07 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

Ain’t technology wonderful? Just a few years ago our mouths were agape at 1GB USB thumb drives that cost $500. Yet here we have Corsair pushing the 16GB mark for $140—a mere $8.75 per GB.

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Posted 09/17/06 at 06:38:14 PM by Josh Norem

Crucial pulled out all the stops with its new Gizmo Overdrive key. This drive roars past everything but Corsair’s fastest offerings.

The Gizmo’s read speeds are more than twice as fast as OCZ's Mini-Kart and Kingston's DataTraveler, and its write speeds are 30 percent faster. This kind of performance has a price, however, as the Gizmo is twice as expensive per gig as these other two.

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