Computex 2010: Patriot’s USB 3.0 Push, Rugged Flash Drives & SSDs
While we may not be physically able to bring you the latest and greatest from the Computex show floor, Hardware Canucks will be bringing you a series of quick articles which will highlight some upcoming products from various manufacturers.
We have seen several products from Patriot go through our testing labs here at Hardware Canucks and for the most part, they impressed us. At Computex, Patriot is showing a number of new flash drives that use USB 3.0 technology as well as a new line of rugged flash drives. Things on the SSD front were surprisingly quiet but we expect some announcements from them after the show.
Article Index:
Page 1: Flash Drives / SSDs
Xporter Magnum Plus USB 3.0 Flash Drive
By using an SATA to USB bridge chip, Patriot was able to significantly increase the performance of their flash drive reference platforms and has decided to implement this technology into the Magnum Plus series of flash drives. To give this solution some bandwidth to breathe, Patriot equipped this line with a USB 3.0 connector resulting in read / write speeds of 160 / 60MB/s. When used on a USB 2.0 port, performance naturally drops quite a bit to 35 /30 MB/s. Capacities will be 64GB and 128GB.
Rage-series Rugged Flash Drive
If you are someone who is always on the go, you will understand the need for a ruggedized flash drive in order to protect your data. Patriot’s Rage series of flash drives pack a heavy exterior coating of rubber which is supplemented by a retractable USB 2.0 connector. This isn’t a performance-oriented product but it still gets respectable read / write speeds of 27MB/s and 25MB/s respectively. Expect this drive to go on sale shortly in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities.
VX-Series
While blazingly-fast SSD's with SATA 6 Gbps interfaces may be all the rage at this year's Computex, Patriot was showing something which is bound to be interesting to those of us who don't wish to spend an absolute fortune to get a performance boost. Following in the footsteps of Kingston's SSDNow V-series Desktop Upgrade Kit, the VX series is targeted towards the boot drive market, allowing people to supplement their existing hard drives with an SSD's performance. We should be seeing these value-oriented drives tip up at retailers shortly in 32GB and 64GB capacities.
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