16GB Iocell CellDisk: world's largest flash drive

That 8GB thumb drive not doing it for you? Iocell has the solution, with the 16GB CellDisk, currently the largest flash drive available. Should be just the thing for creating that bootable XP flash drive you've been planning or for carrying around a couple of flicks from one PC to another. Of course, this won't stay the world's largest for long, and we're fine with that. Bring on the terabyte thumb drives, and make it snappy!

[Rene Enriquez @ Apr 22nd 2008 5:44AM]

YAY! CANT WAIT TO BUILD A FLASH THUMB USB RAID...bwahaha

[dreampc @ Mar 10th 2006 10:25AM]

What kind of power consumption do these puppies have?

...and if 16gig is the current benchmark, how many of those Samsung 16gig beauties can you stuff together?

This, is, of course, the death knell for hard drives.

[miguel angelo @ Mar 10th 2006 10:35AM]

I want my flash HD! just 10 CellDisk working together...

[scott @ Mar 10th 2006 11:04AM]

im not gonna sell my honda civic for a flash drive...

[LD @ Mar 10th 2006 11:06AM]

It's not the "largest". It's actually quite small. It's the highest capacity.

[Santiago @ Mar 10th 2006 11:11AM]

ok, now stick this puppy in a laptop as the bootable hard drive and we can stick most of my apps and media on a regular old hard drive and let's see what kind of performance boost and increased battery life we can get

[dan @ Mar 10th 2006 11:32AM]

:::excited for the future:::

[tracy @ Mar 10th 2006 11:42AM]

FTA..
"The drive comes with a protective cap which protects the USB connector."...wow! that rocks! what a deal...it comes with the protective cap! cant find those just anywhere

[Turbodonky @ Mar 10th 2006 11:45AM]

Problem is, flash media only has a finite number of write cycles - magnetic hard disks can always be "zeroed" out.

I'm excited as hell about the size for music, but until flash media can withstand a large amount of write / rewrite cycles, magnetic disk drives will be the standard.

[xFloydianSlipx @ Mar 10th 2006 12:36PM]

Wikipedia says that commercial flash drives are usually guaranteed for 10^6 erase/write cycles.

How does that compare to the average shelf life for a traditional hard disk drive?

I�m genuinely curious because I understand that there is a DEFINATE and FINITE life limit for flash media, but realistically traditional HDs are expected to wear out after a slightly less determinable amount of time. Also older drives are often replaced for performance reasons as technology evolves, so all a flash based storage option would have to do is be guaranteed for 3-4 years and enough people would find it practical for use in a laptop (maybe still backing up files on a traditional external hard drive as a safeguard). Just a thought...

[xzavier @ Mar 10th 2006 1:13PM]

Add a small screen and a scroll wheel and *POOF* you got a iPod! :D

[Derek @ Mar 10th 2006 1:17PM]

Does it jive with Macs? My Creative MuVo MX (used to be an mp3 player before I got my iPod) isn't recognized on my MacBook

[SH @ Mar 10th 2006 1:43PM]

How much $? And what is the upper limit for the number of write/rewrites?

[Sam @ Mar 10th 2006 1:56PM]

Turbodonkey, please educate me, I have never heard of that. Doesn't Sandisk offer lifetime warranties with their flash products? If it is finite how can they get away with this? It the read/write time that much better with flash drives?

[The icollector @ Mar 10th 2006 2:00PM]

Wow! This really shows you what the future holds for storage.

[Santiago @ Mar 10th 2006 2:44PM]

Turbodonky, hard drives fail all the time. as soon as the SMART status of a hard drive starts saying Failing instead of Verified it is time to replace it. i have never had a flash drive fail on me.

[andrew @ Mar 10th 2006 5:49PM]

"When compared to a hard disk drive, a further limitation is the fact that flash memory has a finite number of erase-write cycles (most commercially available EEPROM products are guaranteed to withstand 10^6 programming cycles,) so that care has to be taken when moving hard-drive based applications, such as operating systems, to flash-memory based devices such as CompactFlash."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Limitations

[cropper @ Mar 11th 2006 6:29AM]

Derek

As long as it is mass storage compliant, as all USB memory sticks are, it will work fine with the Mac.

[Alex @ Mar 14th 2006 12:30PM]

Wow, 16 gigs is really a lot; but honestly, I don't see why one would need such a unit. Think of it, why would I need 16 gigs of storage that can be used only as... storage?

If I have a digital mp3 player, I already have portable storage; I have a digital camera with flash memory in it - I do have portable storage; and so on. I am _sure_ that every person who reads engadget on a daily basis has at least two devices that can be used as removable storage, _and_ provide other functions too [ex: camera, player, etc]

Sure, it is great to know that such a drive exists, and I'm sure I'd find a use for it if I had one. But generally, it will simply replicate the functionality of the stuff I already own.

And at the same time, Internet is a very common thing, I can upload the files I need directly to my home server. Sure, it won't work for big files.. But think about it, if you have a >1 GB drive - how many times have you used it to transport big files? (in other words, not a meg or two here and there...)

[Sree @ Apr 24th 2007 6:25PM]

Alex,

For the simple reason, that none of those solutions you mentioned (like music players and camera phones) can be just plugged into a computer without requiring a cable. You expect me to carry a cable around for the rest of my life??

Also most phones have specialized cables with one end as USB and the other as a phone socket type (which depends on the brand of phone). Same with the mp3 players, many of them require that special cable which is USB at one end and a different type USB at the other.

Flash disks are the most popular medium for data transfer bcoz u can just plug it in anywhere. That you haven't perceived this probably means, you have never used them. So, really you donot understand :)

[Basil @ Mar 14th 2006 4:30PM]

I assume you don't understand why somebody would ever buy an external hard drive either.

[Sil3nt @ Mar 29th 2006 10:57PM]

Santiago, i've had a flash drive fail on me...but only once and that turned out to be because some retard had hooked up the usb socket to his motherboard with the power carriers reversed...needless to say, the thumbdrive didn't just fail...it exploded.

[jEmBoï @ Sep 28th 2008 6:00AM]

what's with this flash drives..MAGIC?

nope...there is larger than this one...

but 4 me..this is good enough...

can't hardly wait to grab one!!!!

[Rick @ Nov 8th 2008 10:15AM]

I'm a professional photographer with a large number of big files. These files represent thousands of hours of work. Although my files are backed up on two different hard drives, it would be nice to think I could archive them with a very mobile (stash it somewhere besides my apartment) flash drive that has no moving parts to wear out. Even after reading this entire thread, I don't understand any answer to my concern question about the long term shelf life of flash drives. I've seen that flash drives have a limitation of 10^6 read/write cycles. Does that mean 10 MILLION cycles?? I would, at most, have 52 r/w cycles per year. So...

Can I be confident that the data on a flash drive, with few r/w cycles, will last, uncorrupted for say... 20 years?

[Patrick @ Jan 9th 2009 6:58PM]

yah this was 2 years ago now the biggest is 1.6TB thats right terabyte, man if this exponential growth continues hard drives are gonna become extinct although RIGHT NOW its not like people can afford it

Now-$116,000
Discounted- $71,000

[gadgetking @ Aug 15th 2006 8:08PM]

Actually it's not nearly the largest capacity USB flash drive.
Check out this Kanguru 64GB flash drive at TigerDirect !!
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2074958&CatId=0

[d-krypt @ Sep 5th 2006 7:07AM]

Well 16 GB is good enough for me because I can put my Linux OS on it and then still boot it up with Linux or Windows (which sucks). I don't see why it is a big deal to people I think a flash drive would be great for people that use them for more pernament things like I do.

[Tack Furlo @ Oct 9th 2006 12:56PM]

Actually...

Some flash media has a "lifetime" while others don't. MMC cards, for example, have a finite number of write/erase cycles. SD cards don't, or at the least have one so large that nobody has ever found that number. It should be noted that some flash drives have this problem, however most of those are the "32MB USB 1.1 wal mart special" veriety and I doubt these 16GB drives would use that kind of chip. Also, even MMC cards which don't last forever can be read indefinately, meaning if you just write them full of data, you can read back from them forever. As an example, using an MMC Card in a cell phone (Nokia's 3300 and N-Gage for example) to store music would be usable forever because once that music is loaded, playing the music back only reads data (assuming you don't write back more music several billion times).

On the other hand, samsung has created both a 16GB and 32GB flash-based hard drive, using flash chips instead of moving parts (It's here on engadget somewhere) put into a standard 3.5 inch hard drive case with normal ATA/IDE ports, so in a way that has been done, though not in a laptop to my knowledge. Microsoft has also added support for what they call "hybrid drives" in Vista, which are normal hard drives with some flash memory onboard. For example, a 60GB hard drive with an extra 8GB of flash, where the HDD stored the most used 8GB of data in the flash memory, and religates the less used data to the HDD. I don't see harddrives dying, but these hybrid drives seem too be the future to me, bbecause they allow most of the power/sped gains flash offers, while still allowing for 500GB of space (or more at some point).

[USC_tech @ Jan 12th 2007 8:34AM]

I think the way ioCell is going with this is to have independent auto-executable OS/apps on the disk.....you walk up to any computer and plug up your ioCell drive...bam - VoIP phone, Mail App, Antivirus, or whatever. Right now their playing with apps @ 4GB. With 16GB, walk up to any pc and tada!....Linux, Windows, or whatever. Take away the overhead for OS/Apps & the rest is just play space. And right now we're just talking pc-pc mobility.....think about the applying it to cell phones.

[Simon @ Mar 19th 2007 10:25PM]

THIS IS NOT THE WORLDS LARGEST USB FLASH DRIVE!!!

The largest one is 64GB.... maybe it came out after this product.

Here is a link to see it

http://blog.techarp.com/archives/2006/08/01/fancy-a-64gb-usb-flash-drive/

:)

[op @ Apr 11th 2007 8:21AM]

How much price? And what is the upper limit for the number of write/rewrites?

[sudo @ Apr 13th 2007 5:28PM]

***Problem is, flash media only has a finite number of write cycles - magnetic hard disks can always be "zeroed" out.***
and don't worry about the write cycles ..before you use the full capacity write erase time you would jump for another high capacity drive..even if you really don't have to.

Think of possessing 1.44 MB floppy drive or even better 16MB Flash drive..if you think of buying a flash drive at least you will go for 1GB..why? simply that's the way the cookie crumbles.

By the time someone say 16GB is enough there comes 64GB and people go for that irrespective of their memory needs...It's just like the case of Uncle Bill's (Bill Gates) sayings "512 KB is enough for everybody".... and think of today's people who possesses 80 GB HDD to 1500 GB HDD..so where does this 64GB Flash comes?...by the time somebody reads this there will be probably a 128GB Flash Drive or most likely 256GB. How'zat?

[mslisa @ May 10th 2007 11:37PM]

alright...is this even available now? I can't find the price anywhere. Is it more than the 16GB Axiom ($ 200 approx)?

[Ken @ Jun 12th 2007 4:02PM]

Somebody was aking who needs this. Simple. 4 years ago Kenwood was selling a 10GB audio hard drive for cars for around $799. I just bought a 4GB flash drive($50) and plugged into my car stereo and wham now I have 1000+ songs at my finger tips. It wasn't till I put it into random mode that I saw just how cool flash drives really are. Instantaneous access to the info. By way of comparision my dual 10,000 RPM Raptors in a RAID 0 seem like I'm getting info from a cassette back in 1985.

[Jensen @ Aug 9th 2007 11:09AM]

Hi All,

We are a direct importer of these drives. They also have a 32GB model which is awaiting licensing here in the US. If any one would like one we can get it for you.

www.elitebrandmgmt.com

[e-mail]

Thanks,

Jensen

[Ian @ Sep 16th 2007 3:23AM]

I just bought a 32gb USB flash drive on a trip to China... it was $14 AUS (that's less than twelve US dollars) . Actually I bought 5 of them, but wish I bought 50 of them at that price. All tested and working at 32gb. So why are these drives so expensive in Aus and the US?

[Keith @ Nov 30th 2007 2:38PM]

Actually, GadgetKing, that's not a 64gig flash drive, it's a 4 gig flash drive.