USB drives to hit 1TB in 2013

Portable hard drives are a must have with a computer, as they let you carry all your files with you where ever you go, but what if you didn’t need a hard drive, and could bring it all on a stick?

Memory maker Kingston has detailed plans to bring as much as one terabyte of storage – or 1024 gigabytes – to USB sticks later this year.

The DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3 series will bring a large capacity stick of memory to a small thumb drive size, pairing it up with the high transfer speeds on offer by USB 3.0.

“The large capacity and fast USB 3.0 transfer speeds allow users to save time as they can access, edit and transfer applications or files such as HD movies directly from the drive without any performance lag,” said Kingston’s Andrew Ewing.

Kingston’s first model to ship in this range will sit at 512GB in storage size (above), but both sized models will feature shock resistance, a casing made from zinc alloy, backwards compatibility with USB 2.0, and a key ring, because you wouldn’t want to lose that much data.

Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but we can’t imagine it will be cheap, especially since the current generation of HyperX drives can cost almost $700 for a 256GB drive. We’ve heard the 512GB model could hit $1000 when it launches in the next couple of months, so expect to part ways with a fair chunk of cash – possibly as much as $2,000 – if you want that 1TB stick.