Now a commonplace tool for lugging around digital data on a keychain, the ubiquitous USB flash drive - aka "thumbdrive" or "thumbstick" - just got a whole lot more alluring as a small-mass-storage device.

Well, alluring to wealthy folks, anyway, or regular folks with an irregularly large expense account, as Kingston has just released the 256GB DataTraveler 310 USB 2.0 flash drive (DT310/256GB) for a gasp-inducing US$1,108.00.

A lot of dough, yes, but that's the cost of life on the bleeding edge, apparently. 256GB is the largest portable drive yet available, a capacity greater than that found in the hard drive of your average laptop or desktop PC.

Sporting data transfer rates of 25MB/sec (read) and 12MB/sec (write), 256GB of the DataTraveler 310 can store, for example, 54 uncompressed DVDs or about 100 hours of HD video, or tens of thousands of 10-megapixel photos and high-quality MP3s. Basically, an entire hard drive's worth of project files and data.

The device also features "Password Traveler" software allowing users to password-protect the drive's contents. Oddly, this handy feature seems negated by the fact that it's compatible with Windows only, though the device itself is compatible with Mac, Linux and Windows computers.

The DataTraveler 310 is backed by a five-year warranty and 24/7 tech support.