CES 2019: SanDisk Shows Off Prototype Flash Drive With 4TB of Storage, New Extreme Pro SSD

Western Digital's SanDisk brand today unveiled a prototype flash drive, which it says is the world's highest capacity USB drive featuring total of 4TB of storage.

Equipped with a USB-C connector, the flash drive is a prototype and thus it's not yet for sale. A 4TB USB-sized flash drive would be prohibitively expensive as even 2TB flash drives cost upwards of $1,000, but it does demonstrate advances in storage technology.

SanDisk is also launching new portable SSDs and a new SanDisk Flashback service for cloud backups. The SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD is designed to offer 1GB/s transfer speeds and it features IP55-rated durability. Set to be released in spring 2019 in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, pricing information is not yet available for the Extreme Pro.

SanDisk's Flashback service is available for two of SanDisk's USB drives, the SanDisk Ultra Flash Drive and the SanDisk Ultra Fit Flash Drive. Flashback offers a cloud backup option that creates an online copy of USB drive content so consumers can view, search, and share files even if their drive is lost or in another location.

Along with these products, under its WD brand, Western Digital is introducing a new My Passport Go with 500GB to 1TB of SSD storage.

The My Passport Go features a built-in USB-A cable and transfer speeds of up to 400MB/s, with the SSD protected by a durable rubber bumper. Western Digital has not provided specific release and pricing details for the new My Passport Go.

Tags: SanDisk, Western Digital

Top Rated Comments

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diamond3

14 months ago

Genuinely interested: Who would be the target market of a 4tb flash drive with a 4 digit price, other than SanDisk having "bragging rights"?

Video editors. Sometimes projects are over the 1-2TB of footage and if you want to edit/backup on the go, you don’t want to deal with multiple drives. While it seems crazy to some, it’s not uncommon to shoot 500gb in a day when using 4-8k raw files or even prores 5k aerials. The market is small, but it’s there.

Rating: 7 Votes

domneedscoffee

14 months ago

Genuinely interested: Who would be the target market of a 4tb flash drive with a 4 digit price, other than SanDisk having "bragging rights"?

Rating: 2 Votes

Mr. Retrofire

14 months ago

Built in USB-A cable? Though the rest of the range is USB-C?

Wah?

400 MByte/s transfer speed does not require USB C, especially with UASP.

Rating: 1 Votes

dilbert99

14 months ago

I welcome the day when spinning HDDs get discontinued...

Rating: 1 Votes

keysofanxiety

14 months ago

It’s not just the size though, it’s the speed of the drive. If it takes hours to write the data then they’re better off spending the same or less on a larger TB3 enclosure.

Yes the Extreme Pro claims to write 1GB/s speeds, but from what I understood from the article, the 4TB prototype seemed more consumer oriented rather than appealing to a professional market down the line. Possibly I’m interpreting it wrong.

Rating: 1 Votes

ignatius345

14 months ago

('https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/07/sandisk-4tb-prototype-flash-drive/')

Western Digital's SanDisk brand today unveiled a prototype flash drive, which it says is the world's highest capacity USB drive featuring total of 4TB of storage.

Equipped with a USB-C connector, the flash drive is a prototype and thus it's not yet for sale. A 4TB USB-sized flash drive would be prohibitively expensive as even 2TB flash drives cost upwards of $1,000, but it does demonstrate advances in storage technology.

Cool tape dispenser.

Rating: 1 Votes

diamond3

14 months ago

I completely forgot to mention speed. But yes, you're correct. High bitrate media pulling down multiple sources while writing render files can't be done on a single spinning disk hard drive. I'm just excited to see the prices go down and the capacity go up.

Rating: 1 Votes