“I want to introduce you to a thumb drive that’s 16 times faster than a typical USB 3.0-based thumb drive,” David Gewirtz reports for ZDNet.
“Enter the solid-state, high-performance thumb drive,” Gewirtz reports. “This category of drive is very slightly larger than a thumb drive, but has the performance of an external SSD.”
“The folks at Other World Computing reached out and provided me with the Envoy Pro mini, a 240GB thumb drive,” Gewirtz reports. “In order to understand the speed benefits of the Envoy Pro mini, I went up to Amazon and bought a top-reviewed Kingston USB 3.0 thumb drive, in this case a 16GB unit, for all of about five bucks. By comparison, the 240GB Envoy Pro mini is $169. But it’s also a heck of a lot faster… In fact, the Envoy Pro mini is so fast, it’s possible to actually do production work right on the drive, rather than on an internal drive.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: OWC Envoy Pro mini High Speed USB 3.0 Flash Drives come in three storage capacities, ranging from around $100 to $265:
• 120GB Envoy Pro mini Ultra-Portable SSD
• 240GB Envoy Pro mini Ultra-Portable SSD
• 480GB Envoy Pro mini Ultra-Portable SSD
I must be all thumbs.
For another $15 you can get a Crucial 1 TB SSD that both Read and Writes over 500MB/second. This not such a great deal…
Where did you find that drive for under $200?
I meant $15 more than the 480GB stick …Amazon for $280. It made my 2012 MAC mini and my 2012 iMAC smoking fast!
Cheers!
Did the same to my 2001 macbook pro and it is really fast now! Just saw an OCZ 960GB SSD on Amazon for $199 – I think that is going in my iMac. Crazy how fast these make the older machines!
There are use cases for this. That Crucial SSD requires a case though, and even with a case isn’t as portable.
I was comparing price versus storage size mainly….but yes SSD’s are not really portable unless you have a USB interface and that still is not convenient
I would not want that much stuff on a drive where the interface could be so easily bent or broken.
How about this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N0V4JG2?psc=1
MyDigitalSSD 512GB $169
Sounds like it’s USB raid on a stick?
Makes sense to me.
This is great. Once we can carry a few terabytes on a thumb drive private computers will be superfluous. You can be at an airport and sit at a chair while you wait for your plane. Stick your drive in boot up with your favorite OS. You will have your data and your apps with you. The cloud will be large scale permanent storage. For large computations your can have a cloud based HPC machine.
What they will need to work out is the security protocols. This could change everything. Remember all Apple and Windows apps use the MVC model (Data, View, Controller). So the device you are on will only change the view capabilities. We will also need a big upgrade to affordable high speed wireless technologies/internet access.
Big assumption that others will provide the computer when and wherever you need one.
Great, now dumb users can lose 480GBs of personal data even faster.
Meanwhile, on my MBP I’m working with a 128GB Patriot LX UHS-I/Class 10 SDXC Flash card I bought at OWC for $48, with a 5 year guarantee. It features up to 80mb/s read and 20mb/s write. As OWC points out: That’s fast enough to record High Definition 1920 x 1080 resolution video!
It’s no SSD, but I enjoy working with the thing all day long for a variety of purposes.
Note that SDXC cards have a storage capacity up to 2TB. And they’re still only the size of an SD card.
And mr. genius here left out an italics end tag after the word “video!” That’s why I don’t code professionally. Sorry.
I purchased these for my employees this year more than half of them failed within 3 months. 2 failed in weeks. Don’t do it.
Is that enough to hold HIllary’s emails?
I use a 4K HDMI recorder which uses these well made SSD USB3 enclosures to record on and then you can install any type of mSATA 250, 500, 1Tb SSD card you want. 500Gb card is $178. Probably a better made deal than the OWC one.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1158328-REG/video_devices_speeddrive_with_240gb_drv_speeddrive_media_enclosure_with.html/prm/alsVwDtl
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1123186-REG/samsung_mz_m5e500bw_850_evo_500gb_msata.html
mSATA USB3 Video Devices enclosures are only $59 and built like a little tank.
Enclosure only:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1158329-REG/video_devices_speeddrive_empty_speeddrive_media_enclosure_for.html
Why don’t we have these in a Thunderbolt version yet? I saw an IBM one in a review a couple of years ago be haven’t seen 1 in the real world yet.