Imagine storing about 70 hours of 4K video on a single thumb drive. Then throw out imagining this, because a month from now you’ll be able to buy such a device from Kingston Technology.
Kingston Technology announced Jan. 4 at CES 2017 that it will release for retail sale what will become the world’s highest-capacity USB thumb drive a few weeks from now. The 2TB device doubles the capacity of its own former world-record holder and equates to the storage capacity that comes with the Xbox One S.
Called the DataTraveler Ultimate Generation Terabyte drive, it uses the USB 3.1 Gen 1 specification for its connectivity, eschewing the newer, reversible Type-C plug connector. One can expect that Kingston eventually will come out with a 2TB super storage drive with that port sometime in the near future.
The drive works with Windows 7 (SP1) and higher, Chrome OS, Mac OS v.10.9.x+ and Linux v.2.6.x+, the company said.
Kingston released its first 1TB USB drive, the DataTraveler HyperX Predator, four years ago; it was selling for $2,730 on Amazon on Jan. 4. If the new 2TB drive will sell for twice that amount, we don’t know; Kingston did not release pricing or availability information in its Jan. 4 announcement.
The DataTraveler Ultimate GT, noticeably thicker than most thumb drives, will feature a zinc-alloy metal casing to improves shock resistance, the company said.
The new drive also will come in a 1TB version, Kingston said. Again, no pricing information was made available.
Kingston released hardware and warranty (5 years) specifications for the drive but did not volunteer information about data transfer speeds or where users can buy it.