Corsair Memory, a leading maker of flash and DRAM products, on Thursday unveiled the industry’s highest-performance high-capacity USB flash drive. The new Flash Voyager GT not only has 128GB capacity, but also features improved read and write speeds. Still, the speed of conventional USB 2.0 is hardly enough for comfortable usage of such capacities.

Corsair Flash Voyager GT is based on typical multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash chips, but thanks to a new dual-channel controller that powers the new USB flash stick, the 128GB drive can achieve read speeds of up to 32MB/s and write speeds of up to 25.6MB/s, with the limiting factor effectively being the speed of the USB 2.0 bus and operating system overhead, according to Corsair.

Although Corsair does not note that maximum bandwidth of USB 2.0 is around 60MB/s, the new Voyager is still dramatically faster compared to its closest rivals: DataTraveler 128GB and 256GB flash drives from Kingston that only deliver 20MB/s read and 10MB/s write speeds. Nevertheless, it will still take approximately 83 minutes to fully load the 128GB flash drive.

“High performance is a key requirement for super-high capacity flash drives, such as the 128GB Voyager GT, simply because it is able to store such a large volume of data. The 128GB Voyager GT is nearly twice as fast as other high-capacity flash drives, which means less time waiting for your music, video or office files to copy to and from the drive,” said John Beekley, the vice president of applications at Corsair.

The 128GB Flash Voyager GT also utilizes a durable and water-resistant rubber housing to protect the drive against accidental damage.

Corsair Flash Voyager GT 128GB is available now from Corsair’s resellers. Pricing is unclear, but it is completely unlikely to be affordable and is more likely to match or exceed the price of a high-quality solid-state drive.

Tags: Corsair, Flash Voyager, Flash