Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB Flash Drive
I remember when 64MB flash drives were just coming out, they were expensive and considered a luxury item, now not so much, they’re pretty much useless at this point in time. The latest drives on the market today are 64GB in capacity, that’s a huge jump from the 64MB of just a few years ago. On a 64GB USB drive you can fit a little over thirteen and a half DVDs wort of information, that’s a lot on such a small device. I love doing what I do as it allows me to see things evolve more closely than the average person, it’s amazing how far we’ve come in just a short amount of time with technology.
Today for review I’ve got a product from our friends over at Kingston, it’s their DataTraveler 150 64GB USB drive. Only a handful of companies today produce 64GB flash drives, so it’s a treat to be getting one of these for review really, and of course in this review I’m comparing the DataTraveler 150 to another 64GB drive and some other high capacity USB drives.
So read on…
The Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB drive comes in our favorite sealed plastic clamshell style package. Through the front we can plainly see the drive itself, and there’s some basic specs and features listed.
The DataTraveler 150 does not come with a lanyard but it does come with a small nylon cord with clip ring on the end to be able to attach the drive to your keys or wherever.
The drive itself has a plastic housing colored red and black, the DataTraveler log is on the front and the Kingston log is on the back:
The top is the cap, it comes off to reveal the USB connection, the cap can also be attached to the back end for storage.
Specifications:
Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB Flash Drive
Model: DT150/64GB
64GB USB flash drive (2.0) – Red & Black
Affordability meets high capacity
DataTraveler 150 USB Flash drive is big news in mobile storage. With a capacity of 32GB & 64GB, it lets you store more digital files than ever before on one drive.
DataTraveler 150 from Kingston helps budget-conscious users break storage barriers, allowing them to easily store and move files in a 32GB & 64GB device no bigger than a pocketknife. As easy as click and drag, DataTraveler 150 can hold just about any file you can think of — term papers, theses, digital images, spreadsheets or other important documents.
Backed by legendary Kingston reliability plus a five-year warranty and 24/7 tech support, DataTraveler 150 is a reliable, inexpensive solution for carrying digital files with you anywhere you go.
Specs:
-Capacity – 64GB
-Fast – Data transfer rates of up to 20MB/sec. read and 10MB/sec. write2
-Dimensions – 3.06" x 0.9" x 0.47" (77.9 mm x 22 mm x 12.05 mm)
-Operating Temperatures – 32 F to 140 F (0 C to 60 C)
-Storage Temperatures – -4 F to 185 F (-20 C to 85 C)
-Convenient – Pocket-sized for easy transportability
-Simple – Just plug into a USB port
-Practical – Stores cap securely on end of device to prevent loss of cap
-Guaranteed – Five-year warranty
The DataTraveler 150 does have a small blue LED in it near the back end to indicate activity.
Overall the DataTraveler is a nice drive, it seems well made, and it does include the small strap to be attached to a keychain or wherever. I like the idea of being able to attach the cap to the tail end of the drive, but it’s not very secure there, it’s fairly loose and just a slight bump will knock it free, so it’s a good idea, but just not implemented very well.
Now we can move onto the testing, I dug out my Patriot Exporter Magnum 64gb drive for this test, and re-ran the tests of course as I’ve upgraded my system since I reviewed the Exporter back in November, you can read the review HERE if you wish, it will open in new window.
As you can see the Exporter is shorter but quite a bit wider than the DataTraveler is. The Kingston does have the LED indicator on it, while the Exporter does not, some people care about those things. The Exporter is made almost entirely of metal, while the DataTraveler is basically plastic, but it does feel sturdy, and well made.
If you’ve paid attention you’d know that I reviewed a bunch of USB drives lately, so I’ll be comparing the Kingston to those as well, in the charts though I dropped the lower capacity drives, the 4gb and 8gb ones are not there for the comparison, only the 16gb and 32gb ones are.
First up is SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP2 Removable Storage Benchmark, higher scores are better.
As you can see with the Combined Index scores the Kingston doesn’t look too good, let’s take a look at the 256MB Files Test:
Here we can see the DataTraveler excels at handling large files, it’s the best in this test.
Let’s move on to DiskBench, this test gives me actual time in seconds it takes to do certain tasks like Copying and Reading to and from the USB drives. I used a 350MB .AVI Video file for the tests.
Since these are time, lower is better of course, the chart is arranged from best to worst with Copy To or Write time are the reference point of the ordering.
Here we can see the DataTraveler 150 does very well, coming in at a hair over 20 seconds to complete the transfer to the drive. We also see the scores for Copy From and Read From are very good as well.
Here are the Transfer Rates for the above tests, higher score is better, same ordering for this graph:
Now here on this chart we see something that totally surprised me, I was not expecting much from this drive, if you look at the specs you’ll see "Data transfer rates of up to 20MB/sec. read and 10MB/sec. write" but if we look at the rates I got it does quite a bit better than those listed specs, much better in fact.
So we see the Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB drive can hold it’s own when compared to others on the market today.
I did a search of NewEgg for this drive and compared prices to other 64GB drives available now, I found that the Kingston is actually the least expensive, at regular price, with no rebates or anything.
The DataTraveler also has a 5 year warranty on it as well, which is pretty nice, though in 5 years we’ll probably have 1 terabyte flash drives and this thing will be completely obsolete, but it’s still a good warranty length.
Conclusion:
The Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB drive is fast, much faster than it’s specs state it to be actually. Considering this is the least expensive of the 64GB USB drives on the market today, I think it’s the one to get and worth the cost if you need the large capacity.
The DataTraveler 150 is decently made as well, it seems rugged enough to be able to last though our daily lives, and if anything should happen there’s always the 5 year warranty.
The design is nice, I like the look of it, but I don’t like the fact that the cap isn’t secure on the the drive.
Pros:
Well made product
Decent speeds overall
5yr warranty
Least expensive (regular price)of the 64GB drives on the market
Large capacity
Cons:
Cap isn’t secure on back end
Still expensive
| Grades: | |
| Overall |  |
| Design | |
| Performance | |
What is the filesystem, FAT or NTFS?
Fat32 is the File System
Hi
The flash usp was’t format and any copy files can’t read it
Thanks
I owned one of the above usb drive and i faced many problems
First it was very slow for 2.0
Then i copied some movies to transfer but no success.It shows that it was copying but when i try to open it from another pc the files were shown in an unknown type and zero capacity
In the beginning i thought it was the difference between vista and xp
Then i saw that the usb driver is not compatible with xpservice pack 3
I finally somehow succeed to format the driver and now seems to work fine but only recognize 32g from 64g
Dont know what to do
Looking forward to have news from you
Best Regards
@Costantinos
You have probably formatted your 64 GB with FAT32 file system, which can only address 32 GB. Furthermore, FAT32 maximum file size is 4 GB.
Try formatting it again with NTFS, then vista and xp should be happy reading and writing it.
I have the same problem with format as Constantinos had but I can’t choose for formatting FAT32 either NTFS.
This DataTraveler 150 64GB is no way to work in my W XP SP3.
Could someone help me to solve this trouble?
i have the same problem as Tibor, has anyone got a solution to this yet?
Possible solutions:
http://www.ntfs.com/quest22.htm
http://www.patriotmemory.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4694
Note that if you need to transfer files from/to a Mac, you may need to stick with FAT32.
Also, rejoice as 2010 will be the year of USB 3.0 devices. Motherboards with native USB 3.0 support will appear.
i have bought a new 64G flash drive and it is functioning for the first 2 days. after that, it show ” the disk is not formated” notice when i try to access my flash drive. i have try to format it by clicking ok but it does not work. i have also try using computer management, VAIO soft recovery manager, Kill disk and other files recovery software but it still doesn’t work. I can detect the 64G capacity under the computer management, but it does not show as NTFS file. i have check the flash drive and it show as RAW file system under the properties.
64 GB USB flash drive og kingston and i m not able to format it. its shows the RAW file system
Hello, i have a Kingstone 64GB, came formatted with Fat32 file system. So because i wanted to transfer files larger that 4GB, i tried formating it into NTFS, but NTFS does not support Removable disks optimised for quick removal. So i used Paragon Partition Manager professional and was able to format it in either NTFS or FAT32.
But NTFS causes Flash to bring errors in Data copied. So i resolved to formating it in Fat32. Mac formats it in OSX file system and it works OK. But Windows does seem to bring up errors when alot of Data is placed on the Flash
In May 2009 I purchased a kingston datatraveler 150 64gbwhich arrived ok . I plugged it in and trasfered some files ok then remved it., Some time later I plugged it in and the plug pushed into the case but managed to get it out, I reinserted it but it did not work I sent an email explaining what had happened and had a reply to return it There was no addresst to send to only Shanghai China on the EMS delivery note. I have emailed numerous times for a return address but had no resonsI am using windows xp Can anyone help
Just received mine and plugged it into my Linux Fedora 10 box and it only shows 34GB rather than 64G, it also had some really strange partition layout.
I removed the partitions, then created 1 Linux partition and formatted it with ext3 filing system (mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdh1) and it formatted 34GB.
I let it set there, after about an hour of doing nothing I got lots of kernel message and I/O errors. I have tested this in multiple machines with the same results.
Who do I contact about the warrenty – I bought this from on Ebay from Hong Kong – that ebay user has since vanished from ebay – Ebay told me that they removed the account
The product says that I can verify with this message”
“www.kingston.com/aswnerifyto identify genune kingston memory products”
lsusb – shows
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1221:3234
dmesg – show
usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1221, idProduct=3234
usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-2: Product: Flash Disk
usb 1-2: Manufacturer: USB2.0
usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 1000000000000EE5
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver…
scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb-storage: device scan complete
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB2.0 Flash Disk 2.50 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] 67108864 512-byte hardware sectors (34360 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] 67108864 512-byte hardware sectors (34360 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdc: sdc1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdc: 34.3 GB, 34359738368 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 32768 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf92b19b9
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 32768 33554416 83 Linux
Hey guys a little tip on how to format as NTFS, as winxp will not let you format removable storage as ntfs by default.
this guide works for XP but i don’t know about vista you can try it but the device manager is located elsewhere
first you need to enter the device manager – right click my computer, click manage, click device manager.
where it says disk drives click the little plus sign, and right click the Pen drive and click properties.
on the properties box, click the Policies tab, then select “optimise for proformance” and click ok.
now you will be able to format the 64gb drive as NTFS
I would like to hear from anyone who has actually formatted a USB key to NTFS and have it work on a daily basis. I have read all the theory and instructions on how to do it…but I have never read of someone actually using it. Anyone?
I would like to know if anyone else has encountered this problem. I have a Kingston 150 64gb data traveler. When I first received it it was formatted and ready to use. I attempted to copy several movies on to the data traveler for storage. When I went to check to see if it was complete, All 8 files had the same. I tried to open them and they all were the same movie it took the title and copies one movie over all of them. I lost all my movie and I was upset. Then it would not even let me access the drive. It continuously told me I had to format but when I tried it would not let me do it. No I have a useless 64gig data traveler. Does anyone know what I can do to make this work and actually be able to put movies on it????
i buy 1 from ebay and just like you ,i screw up my data travel 64gb.Ifind a little program call (HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool ) and for me it is the best.It can FORMAT in Fat,Fat32,Exfat and Ntfs,For now this key is grate,im testing it every day since ……….by the way the indicator LED is RED not blue,it is hard to see.
how about yours…..
hp usb format
Regarding to NTFS partitioning of a USB flash drive , sure its possible and I’ve done it on number of flashes , but to be able to format it with NTFS you have to chose “Optimize for Performance” as described earlier somewhere here.
If the flash is reading un-correct size (64 reading 32 ) or even 64 but any files added after a limit (like 16GB or 32 GB ) will start crashing , this means that you probably have faked flash (not original)… I bought my self two Kingston 64GB through eBay from two different resources and found out any files added after 4GB will start crashing (over-writing) the previous files and becomes corrupted , I used a test software and got sure that the useable capacity was 4GB of 64 GBs …