Whose thumb are we talking about for this "thumb drive"? Regular people or King Kong (really big thumb!) ? The absence of any specs makes it hard to judge how large or compact this actually is.
It’s not 4TB but today you can buy an UFS-II SD card that’s .5TB and ~300MB/s. Works, and delivers that if you buy the right card. I use one and it’s REALLY nice. Of course you also need a UFS-II reader... IMac Pro and new Mac Mini have that, but I don’t know about the PC world.
Grab a USB Type-C cable. Compare the size of the plug. Look at the image. Compare the size of the plug to the rest of the image. Go back and forth between cable and image. You'll get an idea of the size.
Yep. On my 27" 1440p monitor at 100% scaling, it looks close to (if a bit smaller than) real life when compared to a type-C charging cable. This would be a very chunky thumb drive, but the storage density is still out of this world.
Is it 4TB? Probably not, and not as small. If they can get writes up to 80-100 I might be in at a decent price. Writes at 20? I agree with OP, to slow.
Just image if you could send this thing - with adapter back in time 10 years ago - there would few systems that could even deal with it. Just a few years ago 4T hard drive would be rare.
Every Sandisk thumb drive I've had ran hot enough to cause burns. I finally gave up and switched to Samsung. Yeah, I realize this will be a very different process. I also realize that Sandisk will market it no matter what.
SanDisk was making some pretty dodgy thumb drives for a while there, and they love obfuscating the specs at the low end... Some of their earliest OTG and USB-C drives were literally mSD cards sealed into a reader. /smh Their higher end stuff tends to be much better tho, the M.2 external Extreme drive AT reviewed is excellent.
be nice if something like this were expected to last for say 3-5 years with cooling and power write endurance were part of it, would be nice to have a 1-4tb SSD "in my pocket" if the price were reasonable, though speeds must be in the 200+ constant range and say 600 on the endurance for 1tb or better price not above $80 ^.^
Also I would really love if all these drive makers that label something as 500gb or 1TB is exactly that amount when the drive is fully initialized even if that means it requires an extra cell or extra ring however you want to word it, flat numbers are so much easier to work with.
Unless you use it as a boot drive for a system that runs something very write-intensive (HPC, disk caching, big data analysis or big database web hosting) I wouldn't worry. TBW scales with size, so flash endurance is not going to be a problem whatsoever for anyone considering a portable drive like this. I would be more concerned with wear and tear of the built-in cable.
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eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
Whose thumb are we talking about for this "thumb drive"? Regular people or King Kong (really big thumb!) ? The absence of any specs makes it hard to judge how large or compact this actually is.deil - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
Cable does spoil the fun though. Seems like its kinda key-sized. If its 4 TB with ~150 MB/s then I would dig.....name99 - Monday, January 21, 2019 - link
It’s not 4TB but today you can buy an UFS-II SD card that’s .5TB and ~300MB/s. Works, and delivers that if you buy the right card. I use one and it’s REALLY nice.Of course you also need a UFS-II reader... IMac Pro and new Mac Mini have that, but I don’t know about the PC world.
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
Grab a USB Type-C cable. Compare the size of the plug. Look at the image. Compare the size of the plug to the rest of the image. Go back and forth between cable and image. You'll get an idea of the size.Valantar - Wednesday, January 9, 2019 - link
Yep. On my 27" 1440p monitor at 100% scaling, it looks close to (if a bit smaller than) real life when compared to a type-C charging cable. This would be a very chunky thumb drive, but the storage density is still out of this world.olafgarten - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
I wouldn't want to put 4tb of data on something that easy to lose!Thorburn - Wednesday, January 9, 2019 - link
I wouldn't want to put 4TB of data onto something at 20MB/sec....koaschten - Wednesday, January 9, 2019 - link
That's why external USB-C SSDs like the Samsung Portable SSD T5 can do up to 550MB/sTheJian - Wednesday, January 9, 2019 - link
Is it 4TB? Probably not, and not as small. If they can get writes up to 80-100 I might be in at a decent price. Writes at 20? I agree with OP, to slow.HStewart - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
Just image if you could send this thing - with adapter back in time 10 years ago - there would few systems that could even deal with it. Just a few years ago 4T hard drive would be rare.Impulses - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
No system could deal with it unless you also send a C to A adapter back in time... :PArbie - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
Every Sandisk thumb drive I've had ran hot enough to cause burns. I finally gave up and switched to Samsung. Yeah, I realize this will be a very different process. I also realize that Sandisk will market it no matter what.Arbie - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
Oops - Thought this was a Sandisk announcement. Got confused changing pages...Arbie - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
Well, it is Sandisk label under WD. Too bad we still can't edit comments here on Anandtech.Impulses - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
SanDisk was making some pretty dodgy thumb drives for a while there, and they love obfuscating the specs at the low end... Some of their earliest OTG and USB-C drives were literally mSD cards sealed into a reader. /smh Their higher end stuff tends to be much better tho, the M.2 external Extreme drive AT reviewed is excellent.Ashinjuka - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
Only 11.5 years for Kimiko Ross's 4TB flash drive to move from fiction to reality!http://dresdencodak.com/2007/06/12/the-witching-ho...
Dragonstongue - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
be nice if something like this were expected to last for say 3-5 years with cooling and power write endurance were part of it, would be nice to have a 1-4tb SSD "in my pocket" if the price were reasonable, though speeds must be in the 200+ constant range and say 600 on the endurance for 1tb or better price not above $80 ^.^Also I would really love if all these drive makers that label something as 500gb or 1TB is exactly that amount when the drive is fully initialized even if that means it requires an extra cell or extra ring however you want to word it, flat numbers are so much easier to work with.
AdditionalPylons - Wednesday, January 9, 2019 - link
Unless you use it as a boot drive for a system that runs something very write-intensive (HPC, disk caching, big data analysis or big database web hosting) I wouldn't worry.TBW scales with size, so flash endurance is not going to be a problem whatsoever for anyone considering a portable drive like this.
I would be more concerned with wear and tear of the built-in cable.
nukunukoo - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
Finally! A thumb drive that’s almost big enough to store MS Windows/Office EULA agreements.