Kingston Unveils 64 GB USB Sticks

By Humphrey Cheung
published

Remember those days of 64 megabyte USB flash drives ? Those days are long gone as evidenced by Kingston’s latest DataTraveler drives that can store up to 64 GB of data for under $200.

The drives also come with a five year warranty and 24/7 tech support. USB flash drives aren’t terribly complicated devices and we’re not sure why anyone would really use the tech support.

While the capacity of the drives is certainly nice, the removable end cap will mostly lose itself after just one week of use. Also don’t expect high transfer rates as Kingston is not recommending the drive for Windows Vista ReadyBoost.

USB flash drive makers are in an arms race of sorts to build unique devices. While most companies seem content on raising capacities to sky high levels, some are also offering extras like backup software and 256-bit AES encryption.

Kingston isn’t the only company with 64 GB USB flash drives and it joins companies like Corsair, Patriot and Super Talent. Those companies have released similar sized devices in recent months.

The 64 GB DataTraveler DT150 retails for $177 while a smaller 32 GB version will sell for $116. Interestingly enough, the drives are available on NewEgg at a significant discount - $130 and $70 for the 64 and 32 GB models respectively.

Source - Kingston

Humphrey Cheung
13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • iiiceaser
    To me it's kinda stupid to release these things without USB 3.0 spec. How long is it going to take to load this to capacity, or pull all of your data off once loaded? Once USB 3.0 is widely available I'll start being interested in USB flash drives with capacities over 8GB.
    Reply
  • Grims
    Same here, my first thought was no way am I going to spend that kinda money right before USB 3 is released.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    USB3 does not help a lot if the memory is slow as in this case... But yeah... any memorydevice this big needs more speed!
    Reply
  • Shadow703793
    ^+1


    Also can some one fix the glitch in this comment thing? I can't read/see what I am typing.
    Reply
  • kamel5547
    As hannibal pointed out having theoretical bandwidth is nice, but unless devices use the bandwidth it doesn't matter. Much like SATA 3gb is pointless since hard drives don't usually saturate the basic level of SATA.

    USB 3 is going to be another nice marketing tool. It will do nothing for many devices, and yet a great majority will pay a premium for the higher number.
    Reply
  • hellwig
    The only use for this is an environment where you don't have network access but need to transfer multiple GB of files. This happened where I used to work where a lab was isolated from the company network, but we needed to load multiple-GB builds onto the hardware. Add onto that the fact that we needed multiple builds for different situations, and transferring that kind of data any other way was unfeasible. And no, eSATA wasn't an option. Yeah, it will be nicer with USB3, but the need for lots of storage and the USB protocol is here today, maybe just not as much of a daily user as most people would like.
    Reply
  • zodiacfml
    flash is too slow for usb3.0
    though, this is also of great use for people using nettops where downloaded files transferred to the usb device.
    Reply
  • the associate
    might be handy to have all my stuff backed up on just 1 usb device, being updates, programs and my own personal stuff in case of a reformat. Although having a transfer speed of .7 mps to 12 (the more files it sees it has to copy the slower for some reason) i wouldnt really be looking forward to being forced to having to watch 2 movies if you know what I mean. For that price I could just get a solid state disk then use mine as storage =D
    Reply
  • tipoo
    lol@ USB stick tech support.


    i wish they had gone with the USB 3.0 spec though, even though it would never attain the top speed. just for future proofing, though.
    Reply
  • afrobacon
    I agree with the backup of data just in case of a reformat; I have a lot of programs/drivers/updates that I wouldn't mind moving to something like this; it might take a while; but that's why they invented something that can speed up the process of time; beer.
    Reply