I was just researching external hard drives the other day when I noticed their capacities are now up at around 6TB for the extreme ones. That’s a lot of data that can be stored before you need to get a new one. My thoughts started lingering (as they usually do), and I quickly found myself wondering what capacities flash drives have progressed to. I remember writing an article three years ago about the world’s largest flash drive. It had a capacity of a whopping 256GB. Yeah, it might not seem like much today, but that was the absolute top-notch flash drive in its day. Yesterday Kingston announced during the ongoing CES 2013 that their new 1TB flash drive will soon be available, and that it is the world’s first.
The way things are progressing suggests we will no longer have any use for external drives in the future. A 1TB flash drive should be well enough for anyone really. A few of these, and you would be all set. This 1TB flash drive is yet to have a price. However judging from its little brother, which has a capacity of 512GB, the price will be steep. The smaller version, the 512GB one, is priced at $1,750. That may be a little much for a flash drive, right? Well, the 1TB flash drive (as well as the 512GB flash drive) is capable of read/write speeds of up to 240MB/s and 160MB/s respectively.
I suppose we could guess that this drive will be priced at around $3,000 and upwards. Maybe that external 6TB drive isn’t such a bad bet after all, at least until the price of these ridiculously cool 1TB flash drives drops just a tad. One thing is for sure, the future looks like it will become a competition between flash drives and external drives, each with their own distinct advantages. It’s quite easy to see Kingston announcing a 2TB flash drive in the near future since the progression of these flash drives has more than tripled in capacity the last few years. Still, a 1TB flash drive doesn’t sound to shabby, right?
Kingston’s Groundbreaking 1TB Flash Drive
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