New USB 3.0 Flash Drive Has 2 TB of Storage 212
First time accepted submitter Dr Max writes "During Display Taiwan, Transcend and Taiwan's ITRI displayed a finger-long USB stick that reportedly offers 2 TB of storage. That's no typo. It somehow holds up to 2 terabytes worth of information. So far neither company has released anything official in regards to specs or a simple introduction, nor does the high-capacity USB 3.0 stick appear on Display Taiwan's website. But as seen in the video below, the 'Thin Card' thumb drive is even smaller than a thumb, measuring slightly thicker than a penny. It offers a minimum of 16 GB and a maximum of 2 TB."
It'll store 2TB, however... (Score:5, Insightful)
you can only read back the first 1GB...
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I bought my 1 Exabyte drive there a while back. For some reason it keeps overwriting my data though!
Re:It'll store 2TB, however... (Score:5, Informative)
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WIC? (Score:2)
Did they come up with a hardware implementation of the wavelet intelligent compressor? ;)
Why is this surprising? (Score:2)
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More likely a typo. The largest MicroSDs I've seen are at 64GB right now.
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Because of how much larger ti is. You don't go from 60GB to 2TB. The there is the read mechanizes, and other data retention issue, so it's highly doubtful. If this is real,and it mass producible, it would change the SSD market; which would be fine.
IF you where using the same space between bit* it would need to be over 30 time bigger.
*yes, a very crude view,.
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I guess I should give up on trying to be funny huh?
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Create a raid array of 3 stacked 32GB micro SDs, then chain 16 of those to create one huge filesystem. If you leave out all the redundant crap, that could be about the size of a finger.
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I don't know about that...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227664 [newegg.com]
Storage space increasing? (Score:2)
Wow, and I thought we were done.
News is spam (maybe) (Score:5, Informative)
From one of the comments on the linked site:
On the video it says "Actually the one that we looked at on display was only 16GB but the technology behind that particular 16GB stick is capable of scaling to 2 Terabytes." In other words they'll have to wait years for smaller manufacturing processes to occur before a 2 TB drive is made.
I cannot watch the video to verify it.. but if true, then the news is as good as spam
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Something like that...
The video says they're waiting for the USB3.0 spec to be finalized before they can release a product.
If a 2TB version is available, why wait? Why not make a USB2.0 version of it?
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Because at USB2 speed, you could never practically use all the data.
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There's no terabyte-size USB hard drives in the shops where you live? Maybe you could come to Planet Earth where we're more advanced?
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Yea, i think a flash drive is more likely to saturate a USB3 connection then a HDD. Especially if it is using some kind of connector bridge.
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I'm fairly sure he said there was no practical way to use a 2Tb storage device with USB 2.0 ... the shelves full of terabyte hard disks seem to contradict him.
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What? The USB 3.0 spec isn't finalized yet? So what's with all those USB 3.0 devices out there?
Such a pity. The USB IF guys certainly are good at teasing us though [usb.org]. Harumpth. USB 3.0 Spec available for download. Especially since this group of "USB 3.0" devices doesn't exist [usb.org] (dated January 2010. Yes, 2010).
Yup, they're still waiting nearly 2 years after the spec's been available to show off their 2TB flash dr
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Anything for hype I guess.
Re:News is spam (maybe) (Score:5, Interesting)
As of right now the largest FLASH I can find is a 512 Gb unit from Micron (MT29F512G08CUCABH3-12) in a 100 ball LBGA. Couldn't find that package description but maybe a similar one is 9x15.5mm dimension. You'll need more than 32 of these to get to 2 TB, plus a couple of controller ICs.
In short, with tomorrow's technology (what Micron is still developing), you will need a 6" long stick, covered with ICs on both sides. This will not be an inexpensive device for at least a few years.
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6" long stick
But that is exactly how she likes them.
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Naa, she prefers a good foot long...I would know.
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You could say that...some women like to eat a liquid lunch after all.
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The size of the flash unit was given in gigabits, not gigabytes.
32 * 512 Gb = 16384 Gb = 2048 GB.
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Exactly, just like the SD cards when they came out. The original form of the SD card had sizes "up to" 32 GB. That was the theoretical at the time and under those standards at the time when 256MB up to 1GB was standard (back when new SD memory digital cameras came with cheapo 4MB cards in them). With the coming of other flavors of SD cards, I believe that went by the wayside but it was still a long time before anyone was seeing 32GB out of a SD card when initially introduced.
I don't doubt one day the avg
Cool. (Score:2)
USB3 devices exist. Thumb drives exist. multi-TB drives exist. With enough money, you could have all three. I looks expensive. Cool toy, though.
Excuse me (Score:3)
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What market does this target? (Score:5, Interesting)
What market does this target? In the past, removable solid state media like CF cards and SD cards (mostly CF cards) were well taken by professional photographers because it meant they could fit more pictures on a single memory card, which meant as long as their battery lasted, they could continue working uninterrupted.
I think everyone here agrees that the 2GB-8GB flash drive/thumb drive has completely replaced the floppy drive in this decade. People are still leery about keeping important data on a thumb drive for long periods of time, either due to ease of loss or possible read/write problems down the road (cue the know-it-all slashdotter telling me that they've solved all those problems despite continued miniaturization throughout the last half-decade.)
So who are these for? Eventually the 2TB thumb drives are going to drop below $500, then below $150, and be mass produced for $99 or less during a Thanksgiving Black Friday Sale in our near future.
Blu-Ray is only 50-60GB completely maxed out. That's the biggest common media I can think of that consumers have access to these days. Even all of Wikipedia will fit in a 60gb rar archive. Databases are bigger than 2TB. Or if you want a better reference, the plans for the Deathstar are bigger than 2TB. I'm not sure your sysadmin would recommend you walk around with your company's (or Empire's) most important IP in your pocket where it might get lost.
I'm not trying to say 640KB is enough for anyone.... but is it? How much space do consumers really need for portable, temporary storage, vs enterprise use? And do you really want your enterprise data on a portable, corporate espionage-sized device?
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Re:What market does this target? (Score:5, Funny)
What do you think Princess Leia was sticking in to R2-D2 man?
I think that what a galactic princess sticks into her droid in private is none of your business.
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People are still leery about keeping important data on a thumb drive for long periods of time, either due to ease of loss or possible read/write problems down the road (cue the know-it-all slashdotter telling me that they've solved all those problems despite continued miniaturization throughout the last half-decade.)
More like, for the last decade (not half decade), on roughly 3 month intervals, alternate between stories about how they fail at the drop of a hat, and stories about how they've fixed all the problems and they'll never fail again in the future nope never again.
So who are these for? Eventually the 2TB thumb drives are going to ... be mass produced for $99 or less
Sneaker-net once again becomes faster and more convenient than trading online. Imagine every star trek episode and movie from any series and all 12 hours of LotR and the Matrix movie (2+3 never happened, right?) and all the SW, indiana jones, and jam
Copyright (Score:2)
Imagine every star trek episode and movie from any series and all 12 hours of LotR and the Matrix movie (2+3 never happened, right?) and all the SW, indiana jones, and james bond movies all on a tiny keyring
It probably won't happen for another century because the copyright owners would object. Can you think of a scenario where data created by home users would top 2 TB?
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A few weeks of HD video of your kids?
I have 2 boys playing hockey. If I'm obsessed, I video every practice, 3-4x per week, every game, 1-3x per week.
That's up to 14 hrs/week of HD video for 2 kids. At 11GB/hr, that's about 150GB per week.
Hockey season is 5 months long, or 20 weeks.
That's 3TB. Every season. For 10+ years.
I'm not obsessed like this, but there are LOTS of parents who are.
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That video is going to be stored internally in the camera though.which will later be offloaded to the pc for editing. I don't see why you would need to offload the entire seasons worth of video after you put it on the pc. Even if you were going to edit down last weeks games to a highlight video on your laptop, you should only need a16 gb thumb drive for that data.
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You've never met a hockey parent then.
Having reference to every practice, every shot, every move, every game is REQUIRED, at ALL times.
Thus you would never remove anything. Perhaps add a weekly highlight reel, but nothing is going to be removed.
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because the copyright owners would object.
And, so what? Copyright holders were probably not too happy either when we traded music cassettes in the schoolyard...
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That's the advantage of sneakernet: it can't be tapped, it can only be observed directly, to great risk to the observer...
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I'm close to that and I really, really don't try too hard. Half of it it's "legacy" data from the previous millennium. And I was quite late to the game and I'm talking only about what I personally produced, not all my close friends and relatives.
So, what's all about?
500 GB is less than 20 mini-DV tapes and no, I'm not going to convert it to anything else. I like originals and I don't want to deal with the whole deinterlacing mes
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It's not necessarily "raw", as in it's waiting for processing, it's just the way it is. If I want to refer to some old picture or to show somebody the pictures from some random event I'll just go to the folders and use what's there.
Of course I keep it on platters, but not by choice. It's not that much if I want to take it with me but I would prefer to have 20-30g (one beefy stick) compared to 2x192g for two external 2.5 inch drives.
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I can.
Please explain it.
Can you think of a situation where you aren't an unmitigated jackass?
I can: the situation in which you would have helped me stop acting like a donkey by giving advice in a polite manner.
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To be fair, I think you could fit all that into 64GB, providing you're not talking about HD quality.
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Why would you ever want to leave anything at home if you could take it all with you? Dump your entire music collection on one of these and you never have to worry about which 64GB subset you want to bring with you.
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I have 10TB of video in DVDs (yes I own that many).
Do try to keep up. You don't "own" a damn thing...
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He owns some nice plastic Frisbees...that's something at least...
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Video is the most likely consumer target for that much flash. As you point out, a whole wedding in hi-def will fit on 16 or 32GB so not much reason to spend an exorbitant amount to get more than that.
Back when DRAM was driving technology there were companies doing exotic stuff like putting multiple dies in a package or stacking packages to get double density. Could do something like that with flash -- put 32 64GB flash chips on a substrate and get 2 TB. It would be fantastically expensive, tho. For the con
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Common in today's cards:
http://www.electroiq.com/blogs/chipworks_real_chips_blog/2010/09.html [electroiq.com]
The concept of stacking 9 die in a micro-SD card still blows my mind...
BACKUP! (Score:2)
Well I know I plan on backing up all my future data on easily portable and concealable high capacity thumb drives! I'll just have a drawer full of them!
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One use would be to store media libraries. It could eliminate the need to decide which dvd's to bring because it could bring them all. Could bundle with a media player and even put an autorun frontend to select show. The kids go to grandmothers and have every movie/tv show they want.
How often do you end up somewhere and decide to watch a movie where it turns into find something on netflix.
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Smart phones, lap tops, tablets. Possible ever home computers. Nice and quite, and at USB 3 data transfer rates.
The next HD format is twice Blu-ray size, and will probably be closer to 2.5 times.
Yeah, what corporation would want their data on a HD that use a lot less energy, would require smaller server room, cheap to replace and could be easily locked up~
DVR tech would certainly improve. Every cable box and TV would have on. Console device would get smaller and use less energy.
I mean, even if you never use
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When we can store more full-quality (we're talking 2880p and probably 120fps) video
Why on earth would you want to store video at a resolution greater than the number of photoreceptors in the human eye? You've only got 6 or 7 million cones combined between the 3 colours in your eye, and even (good) 1080p is indistinguishable from reality at a distance of 10 feet. 2160p would be 4x the number of pixels of a 1080p screen, and more than a million pixels more than you have cones. And that's assuming you're able to use all 7 million cones at the same time, which you can't because of the chemica
Pan and zoom (Score:3)
Why on earth would you want to store video at a resolution greater than the number of photoreceptors in the human eye?
Control of pan and zoom at playback time, perhaps?
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It's true, How else do you think those CSI folks are able to zoom in so much all the time?
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It's pointless only to people who have no imagination.
What about zoom? What about distance greater the 10 feet? They are already increasing information on the screen,, and why you think the technology is 10 years off is a clear indicator you have no clue what's going on in the industry
There are security cameras that do 2880 right now.
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4320p/120fps is the grail, equivalent to Red Digital. After that, we're facing more-than-film quality, which some will buy, just not me. And already,there are prototypes beyond that [solidlystated.com].
I know, IMAX in the home is the ultimate, until something else comes along. Sharp is already hitting that.
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of course you will. When it's cheap enough and the only format widely available.
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Wikipedia currently has 3,711,110 articles in total in the English version alone.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Overview#How_big_is_Wikipedia.3F [wikipedia.org]
Better Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_comparisons#Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Since neither article gives a true size of Wikipedia (all languages), we need to do some estimates -
Only in June 2011, there have been more than 11 million edits in all Wikipedias and 3.6 million in the English version
If we extrapolate this, we could say that the English version accounts for about 1/4 of the entire Wiki database, so if there's 4million English Articles, there must be about 12million articles in total. This corroborates with the following statemen
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The basic principle y
Toms Hardware sucks (Score:2)
This article highlights exactly why Toms Hardware sucks so much for the better part of a decade. The video in no way says they have a 2TB thumb drive just that when the flash gets scaled down further it could support 2TB. And as always, the Slashtard "editors" make no effort to actually find any of this shit out before posting a misleading summary to a stupid and misleading article.
A rather crappy sales pitch, really (Score:5, Informative)
So really she was just selling what could happen, some day. She could have just as well promised 2pb or 2eb instead, and promised it inside a postage stamp.
So in summary:
However
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Liars, damned liars and marketing folks... (Score:4, Informative)
There is no 2TB drive. This is a 16GB with an _interface_ that could support 2TB. But wit present FLASH chips that cannot be fit into the case shown. May take another 5 years or more. Incidentally, old USB2.0 can already interface 2TB.
So this is really a rather nomal-sized 16GB USB3.0 stick, or in other words nothing special a all.
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Here's an odd coincidence: the Secure Digital High Capacity standard [wikipedia.org] also has a theoretically support capacity of up to 2 TB (2048 GB). Sure, we can't get SD cards with more than 32GB capacity but... it theoretically supports up to 2 TB of data, just as this magic USB thumb drive.
So, if we add a USB interface and a theoretical capacity of up to 2TB, what do we actually get? Well, a regular, plain old USB thumb drive, such as those which we've been purchasing for the past... decade? //capcha was subtle. wh
Consider the data transfer times... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah, 2TB would take too long to read/write at even at USB 3.0 speeds, so we should even bother being excited about the idea of a high-capacity, fast, small form factor removable storage device. Because everyone who will use it will always read or write a full 2TB at a time.
China Sticks - painfully slow (Score:3)
It's an old but clever China Hack.
I worked for a merchandise company, I was the graphic artist, and had to design numerous USB-memory sticks in all shapes, beer bottles, dolls, ice-cream...you name it, fun stuff to... but there's where the fun ended:
Most of the cheaper sticks we got from China was fakes all the way, but they where SMART fakes. Yes, they where re-programmed 1-8 gb sticks, sold as 16-32 gb sticks back then, but programmed in a way so you...the user...never would find out that they're fakes, how? you may ask... ...simple and smart - the more you load onto the stick, the slower it will operate, the nearer you come it's actual size limit, the slower it will add files, at first...most people don't suspect a thing, they just think...oh what a slow stick...bummer...but it works, and let's face it...the average user NEVER exceed 1-8 gb with their personal stuff, you think average joe runs around with a collection of DVDs on their sticks... NO! Take it from me...I've delivered THOUSANDS of these sticks in all varieties to all companies, big or small....we get VERY few returns despite this.
I know...because I just took a look at the boss of our company, he uses those sticks at work too...of course...we use what we sell, but he didn't discover a single thing, but I could hear him swear and curse the memory stick or the computers for being too slow... ...and it took me AGES to explain to my non technical boss that this was a programming trick inside the memory stick, he just couldn't understand how that was done, he said...but it's 32GB LOOK...and then he'd take the time to show me the properties of the drive etc...specs...etc...oh dear...all over again.
And he's an advanced user, what do you think the average joes out there figures out. Nothing!!! And the China factories gets away with it ALL THE TIME!
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I'd buy that for a dollar! (Score:2)
a picture of a sad kitten with the caption "Capitalism corrupts".
Dude, hook me up!
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Deal Extreme is pretty darn cool :) I've been purchasing lots of stuff from them, IDE to CF-Card converter, 2.5" to 3.5" HDD, Usb to Serial, Usb Linux 3D soundcard for 2 dollars!, Strong lasers etc. fun stuff.
But you DO get what you pay for, but at least they don't cheat on purpose, they just purchase cheap stuff...flimsy or not, and re-sell them super cheap to the rest of the planet.
Example. the 1$ Micro-SD card reader broke apart on the first try, one of the IDE to CF converters had bad soldering (solder
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Do the name-brand drives do this as well? I have suspicions about my HP v165w "16GB"!
Same as SDXC (Score:2)
"SDXC, the latest SD memory card standard, dramatically improves consumers’ digital lifestyles by increasing storage capacity from more than 32 GB up to 2 TB." Source: https://www.sdcard.org/developers/tech/sdxc [sdcard.org]
Move along, nothing to see here.
The cheaper technology usually wins (Score:2)
I remember spending close to $150 of a 16GB SLC thumb drive.
Up until about a year ago, the market was flooded with MLC drives that could not offer comparable write speed or reliability but did cost 1/10th of that price.
Now I see some USB 3.0 thumb drives [anandtech.com] posting impressive speeds. I wonder what NAND technology they use.
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Item #1 on What are the good things to look forward to from global warming.
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The waters aren't receding.
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I thought global warming caused the oceans to rise...?
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Exactly. Who cares about size, I wanna know the cost! If I was filthy rich I could probably have a 2TB custom thumb drive built right now.
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However, if it is or will be true in the near future, then that would be incredible. What would happen if you married this with the raspberry pi computer?
I think that's now legal in Iowa.
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A 64 bit OS supports 18 exa-bytes of RAM, it just happens most "64 bit OS"es, CPUs and chipsets we have today may use 64 bit pointers, but they tend to ignore the high 16 bits on them, resulting in support for up to a bit more than 200 terabytes in theory. Your point in general stands though.
Compression? (Score:2)
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I'll bite. I can understand the cynicism, but this reminds me of one feature I really wish USB flash drive makers would actually consider putting in their devices:
An onboard controller with AES-256 encryption, the keys stored on a dedicated chip (not with the rest of the flash drive contents), and everything encrypted.
Couple this with a password mechanism that would zero out the keys if too many guesses are attempted, and loss of this flash drive can be mitigated.
For blue-sky features, perhaps add a GSM tr
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Very true. However, it would be nice if newer USB flash drives supported encryption and secure erase as part of a standard, just like how hard disks have the ATA password protection on the controller.