Patriot 128gb USB key

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:48 pm

G'day all,

I just noticed that the first 128gb USB key has hit the market by Patriot, at newegg and PCCaseGear in Australia.

OK it's not bargain of the century at launch, but speed is claimed to be decent for what it is. For some people this might be a substitute for an external hard drive when prices drop.

Cheers.

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 9:31 pm

When you get to those sorts of capacities, you really start to feel the pain of the crappy write speed of such devices.

PartEleven · Post by **PartEleven** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:59 am

Time for eSATA key drives then?

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 12:54 pm

PartEleven wrote:Time for eSATA key drives then?

I think it is more an issue with the cheep MLC memory/controller they use than the restriction of the USB interface. USB 2 should be good for 30MBps yet I'd be surprised if one of these drives could handle more than half that.

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 3:47 pm

That explains why there's no specific speed specifications available anywhere that I can find. Still, there's nothing to compare it with if ruggedness and small size are a factor. I look forward to further improvements.

Also I should correct my first post, apparently Kingston was first with a 128gb key last month, but I can't find their product on sale anywhere just yet.

quikkie · Post by **quikkie** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 4:32 am

there's a whole bunch of USB memory sticks that hit the USB2 transfer speed limit already (on sequential reads). ArsTechnica has a handy round up here

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:23 pm

quikkie wrote:there's a whole bunch of USB memory sticks that hit the USB2 transfer speed limit already (on sequential reads). ArsTechnica has a handy round up here

Yes on reads, but what about writes? Only OCZ Throttle and Patriot Xporter XT were close to being decent.