Super Talent's RC8: Thumbdrive Looks, SSD Power

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Monday, June 27th, 2011


If you’ve ever wondered why they can’t take these tiny SSD units and just pack ‘em into a thumbdrive case, this one’s for you. The new RC8 from Super Talent is in every way a real SSD, except perhaps that it’s not sitting in your PC’s case with a SATA connection. This one’s USB 3.0 and it appears to really cruise. We’re looking at over 200MB/s reads and writes.

Here are the test results from their announcement video:

Looks mighty speedy! The aluminum casing hides a full SSD architecture, with 8 flash channels and a real live Sandforce controller.

It’ll come in 25, 50, and 100GB flavors. Prices aren’t set yet, but Super Talent said it’s going to be more like SSD than USB drive prices. Tom’s Hardware says the 50GB version will cost $110, which actually seems a bit low to me. We’ll let you know when this