The iDisk II 120x, the world's smallest 8GB USB flash drive

When you think about it, the really amazing thing about Pretec's iDisk II 120x, which Solid Alliance (who is selling it in Japan) claims is the "world's smallest 8GB flash memory drive" is that it just looks like any regular old USB flash drive. Just don't go losing it like any regular old USB flash drive.

[Zeek @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Shuffle modders, start your engines.

[encosion @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Now if they shoved THAT flash chip into the ipod mini, iriver h10, creative zen micro etc. I might be vaguely interested...

[Blurrz @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

This is exactly what I've always wanted, aside from a date with Heidi Klum.

Tons of storage in a small, extremely portable device. Excellent! Now, all they need to do is get about 1 terabyte on a small USB drive for $100, and I'm giddy!

[TheZodiac @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

I saw this last night in a mobile mag @ B&N. The technology behind it is absolutely unbeleibable as far as how they stack the bits :)

How much is it? 11 thousaund bajillian??

[JonesH @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

And why won't Apple sue them over using the iDisk name again?

[jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

This thing looks really nice and handy, but it costs $999. I think I will wait a little while until the price comes down to buy it.

[met @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Isn't the read/write speed for flash drives way slow... ?
I guess you'll start noticing on bigger memory devices like this :) Or have these guys done something about it ?

[Justin @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

and what data is so important and big that it needs 8gb of free space? personally i don't think id ever have 8gb worth of documents!

I thought flash drives are capable of USB2? isnt that fast enough?

[iskra @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Well ... you can put some movies on the drive, loads of mp3s and pictures and plug it in - let's say - your media center PC or connect it to the digital camera to copy pictures off the memory card.

[Carmi @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Justin, Justin, Justin, you sound like Bill Gates did almost a generation ago when he opined that 640K ought to be enough for anyone.

Anytime anyone doubts the validity of a given amount of storage, reality intrudes and once again drives up what we consider to be "enough".

Word to the wise: we'll never reach a point where enough truly is enough.

Carmi
http://writteninc.blogspot.com

[Ian Argent @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Well, I have a RAID0+1 whose usable space is 160 gb, and it's FULL! (and a good bit less than half is my music/pvr collection). You find uses for the space

[met @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Justin the bottleneck is not the usb2.0. I was talking about the read/write speed of the flash memory.

[foebea @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

In flash memory the ###x is the speed. This equates exactly to what we know as cd drive speeds. So a 4x flash card is pretty slow. 56x is what most high end cd burners have now. This drive is 120x. Roughly this means the drive can move 1350 megs or so in the time it takes to burn 2 cds at top speed, without validation. so figure about 300 megs a minute, USB2 permitting.

Actuall megs per minute is probably different from this, but the ###x is a direct correlation, per lexar.com

[PacoBell @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

@JonesH (post #5): Because, contrary to popular opinion, Apple has yet to trademark all words starting with a lowercase 'i' ;)