Corsair’s Flash Voyager GT line used to be the bee’s knees of ultra performant flash drives. Their SLC based 8GB Voyager GT from 5 years ago sat at the top of the USB 2.0 food chain for a long time. Sullied only by releasing an MLC based successor in 16GB (much slower than the 8GB) Voyager GT owned the land speed record nearly maxing out USB 2.0′s 40MB/s bus speeds. Fast forward to present day with USB 3.0 well at hand and the latest Corsair Flash Voyager GT 3.0 arrives, not with a roar but with a whimper. Boasting almost only above average read and write speeds for placing it just above the middle of the road at 135MB/s and 83MB/s respectively.

While this is certainly faster than most of the junk flash drives you will find on most shelves, Corsair is an enthusiast drive maker and has to be held to higher standards. They are currently leading the pack with their Force SSD and Revo drives, they should show flash drives some more love. Mediocre USB 3.0 speeds aside, all the other time tested features of the Corsair Voyager line remain. The durable rubber coating still seems protective enough to survive multiple trips through the dryer without a glitch. It’s still too big to share close quarters with other USB devices but it’s not supposed to be compact and cheap, it’s supposed to be big, fast and spacious for very demanding users. To get a full report on where its speed compares to other market devices as well as form and function head to Everything USB.

[Corsair Flash Voyager GT 3.0 Flash Drive @ Everything USB]

Hitachi has rolled out a few external hard drives that boast business class speed in a consumer form factor. While not as sleek as some other available externals, the Hitachi Touro 3TB USB 3.0 is big enough and fast enough to justify the missing sleek. It does seem to be much improved over the previous versions and many of the aesthetic concerns are explained by the need to dissipate heat on this caliber of drive. The high platter count and 7200-rpm spindle speed require design concerns that supersede fashion.

The Hitachi Touro also tops out most charts for single drive read and write performance. There are better performing drives out there but not at this price point. Besides being a genuinely good buy, the drive shows above average performance with small files. Tiny files, which are what most average users deal with pose a big challenge for hard drives. This drive shows signs of having been tweaked with extra cache to make it handle real world file use much better as opposed to artificially created large test files. If you are in the market for a beefy external drive of the USB 3.0 variety, you can get more details in a review at Everything USB.

[Hitachi Touro USB 3.0 Drive Review @ Everything USB].

If you plan on getting one or two USB 3.0 devices, then you need to shop for an USB 3.0 add-on card. SIIG has a USB 3.0 card kit that is worth checking out. The biggest draw of the kit is the included 5.25 and 3.5″ hub bay. This gives you all the function of a USB 3.0 hub, providing 4 fully powered ports on the front of your computer. Buying long USB 3.0 cables and a hub just to be able to use another USB 3.0 card gets expensive fast. SuperSpeed peripherals aren’t readily available yet nor cheap so this kit definitely offers some advantages for the all-in-one purchase.

The only major caveat of this setup is in some of the cheaper choices that could affect performance. USB 3.0 requires a huge data path, one that many manufacturers struggle to fully enable. The SIIG card only has a PCI Express x1 lane while other cards have opted for an x4. The front facing hub draws power hassle-free from the internal power connectors of your system but all 4 of the USB 3.0 ports have to share 1 connection to the card. These choices could affect “intense use” performance. Everything USB’s review has some detailed findings on what you can expect out of this card for casual and intense use alike. General opinion is that it’s more than capable but might not be all that you’d expect for the price tag.

[SIIG USB 3.0 Card, Hub Kit Review - Everything USB]

Seagate has revised and shrunk its GoFlex portable storage down to a stylish new minimum. Now called Goflex Slim, The svelte drive – based on 7mm thick Momentus Thin 320GB – is barely bigger than a regular 9.5mm 2.5-inch notebook drive. Somehow, they’ve managed to maintain the GoFlex option on this newly miniaturized drive. The GoFlex system allows you to change out the connector to switch between USB 2.0, eSATA, USB 3.0, etc. They’ve also upgraded the software that comes pre-loaded onto the drive from Basic to Premium.

If you already have a GoFlex drive, your connector cables will still be compatible. Older model connectors will work but they might look a little bulky compared to this wafer thin drive. This latest model is about as thick as a #2 pencil and should travel well with or without a laptop adding no more size and weight than your average cell phone. The internal hard drive has been upgraded to 7200-rpm which should provide an appreciable increase in access time performance. Check out the detailed performance stats reviewed at Everything USB.

[ Seagate Goflex Slim 320GB Review @ Everything USB ]

By Paul McCollum

Super Talent has been picking up the slack in an otherwise quiet flash drive market. Once upon a time, we were handed almost weekly upgrades in both size and speed. Now it is almost exclusively Super Talent that thrills those of us who still seek the fastest and biggest flash drive. And they are lapping the competition yet again by releasing the Super Talent Express RC8 flash drive. Only slightly larger than a common flash drive, the RC8 comes in capacities up to 100 GB. The increased speed and storage gives your portable drive more abilities. You can use it to synchronize libraries of files like music, videos, ISOs and VMDKs. The software options to assist in moving your files from home, school and work are quite mature now and easy to use.

Their fastest drive to date, this slim portable packs the premium desktop class SandForce controller. This controller is the source of power for almost all of the fastest desktop SSD drives. Super Talent has a flotilla of flash drives that far outpace almost every drive on the market. Each of them manages to crank more speed out of mediocre MLC NAND using multi-channel controllers (mini RAID) and buffer memory. The RC8 is an upgraded version of their RAM Cache drive which allows the USB 3.0 bus to offload large chunks of small and large files quickly letting the drive shuttle the data to the MLC compressed or slightly after the fact. This results in greatly improved transfer rates over drives without a middle tier controller helping out. Real world and comparative results have been posted in a review at Everything USB.

[ Everything USB - Super Talent Express RC8 Flash Drive Review ]

By Paul McCollum

USB drives have become almost as much of a mainstay in the pockets of computer users as their car keys. While flash drives are more convenient they don’t offer the flexibility that comes along with an external drive for speed and capacity. Kingston’s latest release bridges the gap between pocket-able flash drive and performance drive speed and size. Its HyperX Max USB 3.0 SSD boasts some of the highest drive speeds available in a portable drive and is smaller than almost every other external class drive.

The latest generation USB 3.0 bridge coupled with a top of the line SSD controller (backed with 128MB RAM) paves way for massive data transfers. The 128GB capacity should be more than enough room for business and personal file storage without the space management issues of generally smaller thumb drives. The backward compatible USB 3.0 mini-connector will allow you to use it on older computers not yet blessed with SuperSpeed ports. In terms of real-world scenarios, nothing really comes close with its 200MB/s read and 164MB/s write speed. Unfortunately, almost nothing rivals the Kingston when it comes to price. The HyperX Max costs about $300 for the 128GB when you can get a speedy 90MB/s 1TB portable drive for under $100. It’s really up to you to decide whether or not the Kingston is cost effective. Check out full review at Everything USB to find details of how well the HyperX Max USB 3.0 SSD compared amongst a large sampling of other drives.

[Kingston HyperX USB 3.0 SSD @ Everything USB]

ioSafe has made a name for itself by creating hard drives that can withstand all manner of natural disasters. By survive, it means that once you extract the internal disk from the charred or flooded rubble, all your data should still be there, even if your house or office isn’t. It’s the personal computing version of an airplane’s ‘black box’. Until lately, these indestructible vaults were meant to be nailed down or chained in place with security cables. The extra material required to insulate the drive from water and fire adds a great deal of bulk.

ioSafe’s Rugged Portable drive is meant to be a more travel-friendly version of the ioSafe SoloPRO. It is much closer to the same size as standard external hard drives, but it can easily fit into a laptop bag or carried in one hand from place to place. Being a much smaller drive, ioSafe did have to trim off some of the protective features, yet the drive still managed to survive in all three durability tests: water immersion; fire; and blunt force (basically, shooting the drive with a shotgun). The Rugged Portable also came out on top in the real-world performance test, thanks to the 2.5″ Seagate 7200-rpm drive and USB 3.0. Read a detailed review at Everything USB to find out if all these features and performance warrant the high cost per gigabyte.

[ ioSafe Rugged Portable Drive Review @ Everything USB ]

By Paul McCollum

Following Kingston, PQI and Super Talent, LaCie has also jumped onto the USB 3.0 bandwagon with its FastKey. Bearing a strong resemblance to the IronKey drive, the $499 FastKey USB 3.0 flash drive keeps with the company’s tradition of devices that are easy on the eyes (and pricey). A smooth metallic exterior and a slim form factor make the FastKey a nice conversation starter. The cap and body are lightweight and metallic, giving the feel of a smaller drive. However, the above average width may cause problems blocking adjacent USB ports.

While the FastKey is slightly larger than most flash drives, it packs a whopping 120GB of storage. With this amount of storage, speed is a necessity. What good is 120GB of space if it takes an hour to fill it up? For FastKey’s real world performance, you can expect a read rate of 125MB/s and write of 85MB/s, provided you have a fast internal drive to match the speed. So, it will take about 16 minutes or so to copy everything from this thumbdrive to your PC.

Not all flash drives are built the same, even those as bold to call themselves an Express or Blaze are deceptively slow. When selecting a flash drive, pay close attention to the actual speed rating of the memory as opposed to the version of USB that they support. Full details on how well the LaCie FastKey lives up to its name can be found at Everything USB.

[ LaCie FastKey Review @ Everything USB ]

By Paul McCollum

Portable hard drives have been an indispensable tool for data backup on the go. Seagate has stayed in the forefront of this market for a number of years and the company has recently outfitted their drives with the GoFlex interchangeable interface adapter to make their drives future-proof. The latest 2.5″ GoFlex model has 1.5TB storage, and the choose-your-own connector drive now comes with the USB 3.0 adapter and includes a standard mini-USB 3.0 cable. Other connection kits including eSATA and Firewire 800 which can be purchased separately for maximum performance based on your available connections.

The 1.5TB FreeAgent GoFlex is vast and fast but gives up some of its svelte form to pack on the extra gigabytes. The extra bulk is only noticeable in comparison to other drives of the same ilk but under most circumstances, you will never notice the 0.25″ or so of extra thickness. Performance metrics put this drive well above USB 2.0 drives and significantly above previous USB 3.0 drives. Performance data and other details are all covered in an in depth review at Everything USB.

[ Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5TB Portable Drive Review @ Everything USB ]

The most practical use for a USB duplicator like this is to speed up the process of copying corporate info to a bunch of promotional USB flash drives you intend to give away at a trade show. If you’ve decided not to just let an outside company do it, whether for cost or security reasons. And thanks to the Nexcopy SSUSB160PC’s support of USB 3.0, that copying process will go even faster now. Assuming of course you’re using USB 3.0 flash drives.

But what company is already giving away USB 3.0 flash drives as promotional/informational items? And where do I find them? There were still companies at CES, arguably the most tech-friendly of trade shows, distributing their press kits on plastic discs! So I find it hard to believe that USB 3.0 flash drives have reached the point of being an affordable promotional item. The duplicator does become a little more useful if you’re looking to clone a pile of USB 3.0 external hard drives for your traveling sales team or something, but with a price tag of $1499 I’d say it’s probably smarter to just drag your feet for another year when these are more commonplace and a lot cheaper.

[ Nexcopy 16 Port USB 3.0 Duplicator ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]