Kingston unveils world's first 256GB USB flash drive

[Matthew DeCarlo]

After delivering the world’s first 128GB USB flash drive, Kingston has claimed the title again for their 256GB DataTraveler 300. The drive makes use of a cap-less design which seems to employ a sliding mechanism to eject the USB head. Being larger than my primary OS HDD, I imagine this beast can host quite the cache of media.

The drive is capable of holding up to 365 CDs – or one album for every day of the year. The 256GB DataTraveler 300 features read rates of up to 20MB/s and write of 10MB/s. Given its storage capacity, the drive is a bit bulky at 2.78” x .67” x .87” but it shouldn’t detract much from its portability. While the drive is ReadyBoost-capable, its password software will not work properly if ReadyBoost cache is enabled.

It is built to order and ships with a five-year warranty and 24/7 tech support. According to Kingston’s website the DataTraveler300 is available in the Far East, Middle East and Africa only. The MSRP is £565.67 (about $935.11).

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/35509-kingston-unveils-worlds-first-256gb-usb-flash-drive.html

 

[Technochicken]

My god that's massive. If my calculations are right, and the flash drive actually could average a 10mb/s write speed, it would still take a bit over 7 hours to fill. This will only appeal to a very small group of customers though. For that price, you could buy 9 terabytes worth of external hard drive space.

 

[Burty117]

Possibly the most expensive and useless USB drive in the world, wait for a USB 3.0 capable one for this kind of size.

 

[Vrmithrax]

Could make for a hell of a backup system for mobile/isolated platforms with fairly small drives (160s maybe). Or a backup for your media...

But, umm, why would you want to? You could get an SSD and put it in an external 2.5 drive enclosure, for less money and much faster performance. The only premium feature going for it is the smaller form factor.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Granted, there are both faster and larger capacity solutions but I think (as usual) most people overlook the target. This is not meant to be the fastest nor largest capacity storage option - no USB flash drive is. It's meant to be portable - and it is.

Yes, a one-thousand-dollar 256GB USB flash drive has a limited audience. I think the fact that they're built to order shows that Kingston realizes this. Nevertheless, the drive is probably very useful to a handful of professionals out there.

You can compare apples to oranges all day long, but the bottom line is, this thumb drive has the highest capacity presently available and it doesn't sacrifice much in the size department.

 

[Guest]

Just give it a while, and the price will come down as all other pieces of tech.

Fairly excited that they're producing these now, only a matter of time before we see 1TB flash/jump drives.

 

[TomSEA]

I can't even imagine what processes, applications or files you would need one of these for. It's impressive no doubt. But as example, a typical DivX movie is only 700mb. You really want a thumb drive to tote around nearly 300 movies?

 

[Guest]

readyboost is going to suck balls with those r/w speeds

 

[Technochicken]

Readyboost speeds up your computer by using the extremely low access time of solid state drives, so bandwidth is not as important. With readyboost, the flash drive will never have to transfer 10mb/s.

For such an expensive drive though, I'm surprised that there aren't other connectivity options besides USB. For instance, I've seen flash drives that have eSATA on one side, and USB on the other.

 

[Wendig0]

This type of drive would be great for Seismic software companies that routinely demo their products for large oil companies. After having worked in IT for one of them, and managing the bulky external drives the sales force checked out, this type of portability would most likely be appealing to the salesmen of those companies. eSata, however, should be an available option.

 

[tengeta]

Get R/W speeds up or you can make 20TB flash drives that have little to no more use than 2GB ones.

 

[Guest]

That's bigger than my hard drive. I want one.

 

[license27kill]

talking about great and huge storage..

i might need flash drive..

but i dont need expensive and bigger storage that will prove as fast as the smaller ones.

40-60 gig is enough.

250gig is sick.

i will really wait for that portable ssd to be cheap..

 

[Guest]

USB 3.0 wouldn't make any difference as its the memory itself that is slow not the interface.