Kingston DataTraveler

Kingston's entire DataTraveler line is very well built, and we start off looking at them with the entry level DataTraveler drive.

The regular DataTraveler drive is a bit dated now in terms of performance, but it is still functional and looks quite stylish. The color of the insert varies based on the capacity. Our 512MB sample was blue, 128MB drives are red, 256MB drives are green and 1GB drives are gray.

As we mentioned above, the entire DataTraveler line is very well built and this drive itself feels no less solid. The cap is very secure and actually takes quite a bit of force to pull off, and the plastic casing is reasonably thick.


Kingston's DataTraveler uses a Toshiba flash controller, and only a single NAND flash device due to its small size.

Since the vanilla DataTraveler is Kingston's entry level drive, it doesn't have any additional features. The drive comes with no software and no accessories like a lanyard or USB extension cable. The drive is priced competitively with Crucial's Gizmo!.

 Kingston DataTraveler
Sizes Available 128MB - 2GB
Lanyard Included No
USB Extension Cable Included No
Data Encryption No
Password Protection No
Secure + Public Partitions Simultaneously Accessible N/A
Flash Controller Toshiba TC58NC6682G1F
Flash Memory Toshiba
Warranty 5 years

Crucial Gizmo! Kingston DataTraveler II
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  • BJL - Monday, October 16, 2006 - link

    Do the read and write speeds change for the 1gb and above models? Would I get the same performance, or should I stick with the 512mb?
  • NeoZGeo - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link

    what kinf of benchmark are you guys using? How come some of those drive write speed is sooooo low!? Like Trenscent, OCZ Rally, i've seen some reviews out there which says other wise.
  • NeoZGeo - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link

    here's the review by tom's

    if you look at the trenscend jet flash, it actually has the highest write speed average out at 23.3 mb/s vs anandtech's 8.7 mb/s !? what the hell?
  • NeoZGeo - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link

    haha oops, forgot about the link :D

    http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20050520/usb_f...">linky
  • quanta - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link

    It looked like Tom's test is testing the write speed between USB host and flash drive's controller's memory buffer, instead of actual write speed, which can only be verify by doing a read after writing is completed. There are also reports that http://www.auphanonline.com/articles/view.php?arti...">cluster size may affect the write access behaviour. BTW, Tom's http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/10/two_fast_an...">later review has simultaneous reads and writes benchmark, which slows Memina Rocket to a halt.
  • quanta - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link

    In addition, even when using buffered write in SiSoft Sandra, it is extremely unlikely that Transcend Jetflash 110 can write anywhere near 23.3MB/s. http://www.oc.com.tw/article/0510/readparticle.asp...">This benchmark shows that when doing random write with Kingston DataTraveler ELITE, write speed dropped more than a half compared to sequential write.
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  • TrueWisdom - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link

    I'm the in-house support for a university building and I've had absolutely horrible luck with Lexar drives. Lexar often fails to detect entirely on somewhat older machines (the Latitude C840, for example) and has also displayed a relatively high failure rate for me. I don't have any positive or negative impressions of Kingston drives, so I can't say anything there, but I will say that I've had by far the best luck with Sandisk drives. I've never had one fail on me, and I've seen them go through wash cycles, get run over by a car, and get left out in the rain. Compatibility has been universal as well. They may not be the fastest drives but they really are the only ones I've ever trusted.
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  • pendrivethis - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link

    i work for a flash memory controller maker and in all honesty the most meaningful performance test is random write. and no one really advertise that since sequential read speeds seem much more appealing and marketable. i can get a dual-channel & interleaving enabled usb 2.0 pen drive with micron or samsung nand-type flash to go up to 34mB/s in sequential read, but the engineer who designed this still tells me that he'd rather use and-type flash from renesas (formerly hitachi) since and flash has a better random write than nand flash.

    and knowing what i know, if you use your pen drive very often, and i suspect some of you may be in that boat, i'd check out some of the burn-in testing results especially since companies are not entirely using only samsung nand flash. certain new flash whether nand-type or ag-and-type and even some high-density samsung flash seem to be displaying a need for extra care in ecc. data-verify errors are fatal, especially if it's the only copy you got...

    anand, perhaps a little visit to some of the design houses for these controllers the next time when you're in taiwan is in order. computex is only 9 months away.

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