CES 2017: Kingston Debuts World's Largest USB Flash Drive With 2TB Storage

[Wackery]

No USB-C version?

they don't want to cater to a niche audience

 

[Larry The L]

But why? In this day and age, where we are locking down our machines for security; where most external devices are blocked by admis; where we have servers and clouds; why would you need something like this and spend that kind of money? What is the use case for this?

I use high capacity USB sticks for many reasons. Portable high capacity storage is very useful. You just don't see that.

And I just discovered that this forum does have an ignore feature. Yippee.

 

[Negan Lannister]

I will wait for it to drop to under $100 which could take 10 years.

 

[44267547]

Cool to see where technology has gone to allow such massive storage on such a small device.. however the prices are out of this world.

Small price to pay when technology gives you the mobility of expansive storage. But way more than I would need.

 

[Juicy Box]

This is pretty impressive.
I wouldn't ever buy one due to the cost, but I look forward to a day that this will be affordable.

I am just curious, has anyone ever tried running thumb drives in a software RAID?

Yes, I did a RAID0 over four 8GB USB2 drives back in the days - just to see if it would work. It did, and due to slow flash, it didn't saturate the bus

You bet!

Thanks for the replies.

I feel like I have tried it before, a long time ago when I was trying to reduce load times for WoW on my Mac Pro 1,1. I had some HDD drives in a RAID0, but thought a few flash drives might of been better.

I can't remember if I successfully did it, but I have a vague memory that the drives end up being ridiculously slow do to the slow flash. If you were able to do it using Apple's Disk First Aid app, or what ever it is called, I am sure I did it.

I just have little memory of it.

Anyways, if you had two of these in a RAID0, I bet they would be fast. It would be costly, but having that speed, with the portability would be really nice.

 

[Mousse]

Hehe. It's so big...

That's what she said.

 

[Unami]

In ~2006g I paid $450 for an 8GB USB drive thinking how amazing it was so much data could be stored in such a small space. 3 years later they were $50 and now I'm routinely given 32gb USBs that hold a single promotional PDF.

I look forward to making this same comment in 10 years with slightly different numbers.

i still can't believe that you can now put 512GB on a space as large as your pinkie nail (meaning: on micro-sd). my first hard-drive had 20mb and was at least a thousand times larger.

 

[nuckinfutz]

you guys/gals are old. #GetOffMyLawn

 

[Unami]

I will wait for it to drop to under $100 which could take 10 years.

nah, it won't take that long. 10 years ago, a 2gb usb-stick cost as much as 128gb cost today (about 30$) - i now, it's not linear, but i'll bet you'll get around 4tb for that money in 2027 (if it even makes sense to carry around that much data by then - maybe we'll have true 3d-video then. but probably it won't. but the entry model iphone will probably have 128gb by then - the first iphone had 4gb 10 years ago.)

 

[Juicy Box]

You bet! And as shown in the two minute video below (featuring eight drives at the end), it can actually speed up write times:

You can encrypt flash drives for security, allow external devices on your own computers, and avoid the relatively low data caps, subscription costs, and slooow transfer speeds of cloud storage. With 4K video around the corner, I'm guessing a niche market will find these devices immensely useful for video transfers.

I watch the video. This was impressive, and it was done using the disk utility. I thought I read somewhere that Apple removed the soft-RAIDs feature in Disk Utility, and the only way to do it was in Terminal. It is nice to see it is still there.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Nothing short of WOW!

 

[RedOrchestra]

So when's Apple going to let me do a back-up and restore from back-up to one of these Kingston beauties from my iPP and iPhone? Tim said if I had an iPad I'd no longer need a computer. (I have absolutely NO interest in iCloud . this is the way I want to go)

 

[saudade]

Only 1k each? Nice that's 2 cheap 4 me i gonna buy a lot 4 me and some of my vest friends u know what i mean?

 

[Naaaaak]

Might be the biggest, but it looks like a brick.

 

[Cloudkicker]

That looks donglelicious!

Which isle of Home Depot do I find it in? Can it pound in deck nails?

 

[Marx55]

Specifications? Sequential read/write? Random read/write (IOPS)? MTBF? Weight? Can it be used to boot Mac and work from it all day long? Availability? Price?