As our need for portability has increased, so too has the importance and prevalence of the friendly little flash drive. The unsung hero for so long, it's now become a necessity for so many. Consumers want big storage, small size, durability, and affordability; no small task. The beauty of the memory industry is the capacitiies increase at an alarming rate, and the prices drop considerably quick as well. And this leaves us at today's discussion: the 64GB flash drive.

A beastly amount of information can be stored on a 64GB flash drive, data of all sorts and sizes. At that capacity, you could store the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on a device that's the size of your car key. Impressive. And with prices continuing to drop, it won't cost a fortune to do it. But what about performance? Around here, we think Performance is King, and we've heard people complain these large capacity flash drives are slow as molasses in a Canadian winter.

Well, today we're looking at the Kingston DataTraveler 64GB flash drive, and to prove or dispel that notion we're going to pit it against a popular and fast, smaller capacity flash drive. Inspired by Newton's proof that heavier objects do not fall faster to the ground than lighter ones, we're not convinced that large capacity flash drives transfer files slower than smaller drives. So we put it to the test, and we think you may be quite surprised with the results.

We'd like to thank our friends at Kingston Technology for supplying the review sample.

Founded in 1987 with a single product offering, Kingston® Technology now offers more than 2,000 memory products that support nearly every device that uses memory, from computers, servers and printers to MP3 players, digital cameras and cell phones. In 2007, the company's sales exceeded $4.5 billion. With global headquarters in Fountain Valley, California, Kingston employs more than 4,500 people worldwide. Regarded as one of the “Best Companies to Work for in America” by Fortune magazine, Kingston’s tenets of respect, loyalty, flexibility and integrity create an exemplary corporate culture. Kingston believes that investing in its people is essential, and each employee is a vital part of Kingston’s success.