VisionTek Launches Pocket-Sized USB 3.0 Solid State Drive

VisionTek just announced the new USB Pocket SSD line of thumb drive-sized Solid State Drives for creative professionals, IT power users, and performance enthusiasts seeking ultra-fast media and large file transfers. VisionTek USB Pocket SSD comes in two sizes of either 120 or 240GB while being compatible to nearly all Windows, Mac OS X and Linux based systems with USB ports.

While this drive only has the size of an ordinary thumb drive, it can do a lot more as it’s basically a full SSD that is inside this drive. The drive itself is built from aircraft-grade aluminium. The internals are powered by a LSI SandForce 2281 controller that can deliver up to 455 MB/s reads and up to 440MB/s writes with a UASP compatible motherboard or USB controller.

One of the really cool features more and more external USB drives have lately, is the ability to download Boot Camp drivers and install a full and working version of Windows 8 or higher directly on the thumb-drive. This allows you to take your own Windows version with you anywhere and have your personal settings and files available on any system that can boot from USB. Another added bonus is that no external power supplies are needed, the drive can get enough power from the USB port itself to run, making it truly portable.

The drive also features the LSI DuraClass Technologies to offer better performance and power efficiency. DuraWrite is said to extend the drives endurance 20 times or more compared to other SSD controllers and the Advanced Wear Leveling and Monitoring ensures equal distribution of the data across the drive. RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) is another feature in the DuraClass technology that protects your data on the drive from flash block failures without typical RAID inefficiencies. The drive also features ECC correction, but there is no mention of how many bytes it can recover.

The new thumb drives have a 7 percent over-provisioning to ensure real-time redundancy and the error correction mentioned above. The random 4K performance is rated up to 39k IOPS and the drive itself measures a tiny 93mm x 24mm x 12mm, weighs 57 grams. It has a 2-year warranty attached beside the lifelong technical support from VisionTek US.

Both the 120GB ($109.99 MSRP) and 240GB ($174.99 MSRP) models are designed and built-in the US, and are available immediately from VisionTek, and select e-tailers such as Newegg and Tiger Direct.

Thanks to VisionTek for providing us with this information

Images courtesy of VisionTek