It’ll take less time to transfer files from a PC to a thumb drive with faster USB 3.1 devices announced at CES, which also have storage capacity touching 512GB.

The new thumb drives plug directly into USB 3.1 ports in PCs, which are faster at file transfers than USB 3.0 drives. A 64GB flash drive is available for as little as US$34.99.

New USB 3.1 thumb drives from OWC and Patriot Memory also work with the slower USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. The USB 3.1 protocol can transfer data at 10Gbps, which is two times faster than USB 3.0. 

The drives plug directly into the larger USB Type-A ports, which resemble USB 3.0 ports and are just reaching PCs. The new drives won’t plug directly into the popular USB Type-C ports, but can be connected through a dongle.

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