Sandisk releases its Extreme Ducati Edition thumbdrive and memory cards

Sandisk evidently believes its time as a sponsor of the championship-leading Ducati Corse MotoGP team has taught it a thing or two about speed and style. The company just launched the Sandisk Extreme Ducati range, including its fastest-ever CompactFlash and SD cards, as well as a high-speed USB flash drive, all co-branded with Ducati Corse logos. While the cards will spend much of their time hidden in digital cameras and other devices, the USB key is dressed to impress, faired in Ducati red and black like the exotic Italian racebike. Ducati fans, much like the Ferrari fans of F1, have never been afraid to wear their passion on their sleeve - now they can wear it on their keyrings too.

Sandisk Extreme Ducati Editions USB Flash Drive

The true “Ducatisti,” as aficionados of Ducati motorcycles call themselves, will appreciate the attention to detail in the SanDisk Extreme Ducati Edition USB Flash Drive, including the Ducati Corse logo on top of the drive and the red tail light that illuminates whenever the drive is inserted into the USB port of a computer . On the inside, the drive offers a generous 4 gigabytes of capacity and front-of-the-grid read and write speeds of 20 megabytes per second - the fastest of the SanDisk portfolio of consumer USB drives. In other words, there isn’t a long wait to fill the drive’s big fuel tank with documents, photos, music and other digital data.

The USB drive will be available in August/September worldwide at a retail price of US$125.

Sandisk's fastest ever CompactFlash and SD cards

With Ducati's MotoGP stars Casey Stoner and Loris Capirossi looking on, Sandisk also released their fastest ever SD and CompactFlash cards on the eve of this weekend's championship round at Laguna Seca, California.

The line-up consists of 4- and 8-gigabyte2 (GB) capacities for the SanDisk Extreme Ducati Edition CompactFlash card and 4GB for the SanDisk Extreme Ducati Edition SD Plus card. The latter features a snap-open connector that enables the card to be plugged in directly to the USB port of a personal computer without requiring a cable or reader. Distinctive bright red labels and packaging bear images of Ducati MotoGP racers and the Ducati Corse emblem.

“With the SanDisk Extreme Ducati Edition cards, we have reached a new threshold of speed – 45 megabytes per second for the CompactFlash cards and 20MB/sec1 for the SD Plus card,” said Tanya Chuang, director of worldwide retail product marketing for the high performance imaging market at SanDisk. “These speeds allow for fast transfers of images from the cards, and are especially useful for professional photographers in their work-flow environments.”

The SanDisk Extreme Ducati Edition CompactFlash card is twice as fast as the SanDisk Extreme III card and is 5MB faster than the new SanDisk Extreme IV card, she added.

Suggested retail prices are US$165 for the 4GB CompactFlash card, US$315 for the 8GB CompactFlash card and US$130 for the 4GB SD Plus card. Initial distribution is planned only for Europe and North America.