Kingston Data Traveler Workspace Windows To Go Flash Drive Review

The Kingston DT Workspace USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a ‘LSI SandForce Driven’ SSD that can start it’s own OS on any computer, compliments of the new Microsoft Windows 8 Enterprise Windows to Go (WTG) environment.

As of today, technology has taken us to a place where it simply isn’t necessary to be stuck to a single system, or lug around a laptop any longer. WTG allows your system, on USB, to go where you go and start from just about any computer.

Our review today is going to provide a bit of a background of Windows 8 Enterprise Windows To Go and, more importantly, we hope to provide a glimpse of the Kingston DataTraveler Workspace Flash Drive that even Kingston would never have expected, not to mention some great benchmarks.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS TO GO

The Kingston DataTraveler Workspace USB 3.0 Flash Drive is one of only three such devices to receive Microsoft accreditation for the use of MS Windows To Go, a component found within Windows 8 enterprise.  During initialization of WTG, the flash drive is confirmed internally and will not work unless the source is identified as the Kingston Workspace, SuperTalent RC8 or Western Digital My Passport Enterprise.

Windows To Go enables a user to create a fully bootable Windows 8 environment on the flash drive that can be booted and used on any computer containing Windows 7 or Windows 8.  It takes aim at the corporate level user who is now able to have with them a fully operational copy of their corporate PC environment for use anywhere.  Once started, it also provides a separation between the existing computer files and that of WTG, providing a certain degree of security.

THE KINGSTON DATATRAVELER WORKSPACE 

The Kingston Data Traveler Workspace is a USB 3.0 flash drive, available in capacities of 32, 64 and 128GB,  has performance specifications of 250MB/s read and write speeds, and is fully bootable.  Our copy contained Windows To Go 90 day evaluation software and, in starting up for the first time, took about ten minutes to gather what it needed and get off the ground.  Without getting to involved in Windows 8, this included such things as tying in our Microsoft identity and allowing it to synchronize.  After that, starting Workspace took only six seconds from post and flew as fast as any SSD.

The Kingston DT Workspace supports mobile work styles as ‘Bring Your Own PC’ earns full marks as I threw the USB into no less than five of our systems and it performed flawlessly throughout.  Two points of consideration are that you might need to go into the system BIOS to ensure that booting from USB is enabled and the first boot into any new external system always takes a bit longer as it needs to gather, install and organize the drivers.  After that, it will always remember the specific system and starts lightning fast. The Workspace has a two-year warranty and pricing was unavailable at the time of this report.

WORKSPACE COMPONENTS

If we might offer a bit of advise, DO NOT attempt to follow our lead on this one as our Workspace perished as a result of disassembly.  Once opened, the Workspace contains two attached printed circuit boards, the main one containing the Genesys USB 3 SATA Bridge and LSI SandForce SF-2241 flash storage processor with each containing two modules of Intel 25nm MLC synchronous 8GB NAND flash memory. The RAW total of all memory is 32GB, however, the use of over provisioning reduces it slightly to 29GB.

Quite frankly, it is products like the Workspace that show Kingston Technology as being much more than a typical run-of-the-mill manufacturer.  We would never have expected their use of synchronous memory in the Workspace, much the same as we have seen previously in the Kingston Hyper X SSD family.