Fusion-io is famous for producing the world’s fastest and most expensive SSD solution. Now it has another blazing fast innovation that should have you drooling in no time. The ioDrive Duo is hailed as the fastest and most innovative SSD on the planet thus far.

The server-based PCI Express SSD is aimed at enterprises who can and will pay more for vast quantities of lightning fast storage space. So, what’s the speed? 1.5GB sustained read speeds and 1.4GB sustained write speeds. Say it with me. Wow!

Today SanDisk has likely pleased at least a few more professionals in the digital photography and videography world with the introduction of the new 32GB Extreme III CF card. Not only have they doubled the capacity of the largest CompactFlash card SanDisk previously had available, but they’ve also bumped the read/write speed up from 20 MB/second to 30 MB/second with this new item.

Anyone that heavily uses memory cards for digital cameras or video cameras can appreciate how nice it is to have more storage in a single card, and upping the transfer rate by 50% makes the decision to get the larger 32GB CF card just that much easier. Sure you can generally get an SDHC card for a little less money and they are a little bit smaller, but the transfer rate is what will make a difference. The Kingston 32GB SDHC card for example can hold just as much, but moving the card’s entire capacity of data is the difference between about 18 minutes for the SanDisk CF and 2.2 hours for the Kingston SDHC.

SanDisk upped their available SDHC card capacity today by putting 32GB of flash memory in the latest to the line of Ultra II SDHC cards. This new 32GB flash card reads and writes at 15MB/second, which is a nice increase from the 10MB/second found previously from the Ultra II’s.

This card to date is the largest flash memory card put out by SanDisk and brings them in line with the most capacity available in an SDHC card in the industry. This kind of storage can put as much as 4 hours of 1536 kbps MPEG-4 video or around 8,000 digital photos on a card not much larger than your thumbnail.

Imation has being showing around at CES its updated line of secure, rugged Pivot Flash Drives. Two models make up this family - the Pivot and Pivot Plus - and they range in price around $70 to $250.

The Imation Pivot drives come in storage sizes ranging from 1GB to 8GB. The more basic model is described by Imation as having “an enhanced design and security features,” meaning it offers up encryption software and a tamper resistant design. It’s also enhanced for Windows Vista ReadyBoost.

One common compliant of flash-based portable media players is they don’t have enough storage for all of your media files. Creative is today challenging that issue by globally releasing a new 32GB version of its Zen player. It will price for around $330.

This 32GB Zen from Creative will reportedly be the world’s first flash memory based PMP of this size. Creative says it will be capable of holding up to 8,000 songs, 110 hours of video or thousands of photos. It offers up a 2.5-inch color screen for viewing and will let you get up to 30 hours of music or 5 hours of video playback before needing a recharge.

PNY Technologies, a maker of computer memory products, and Ironkey, a developer of computer security products, are teaming up to create a co-branded USB flash drive for retail. The new PNY 4GB IronKey Secure USB Flash Drive is priced at around $150.

The PNY 4GB IronKey Secure USB Flash Drive offers up a variety of measures to protect and secure your data. These include Internet authentication software, private web surfing, data backup, government-level AES “always on” encryption and a durable body design.

EDGE Tech is out today with a large capacity USB flash drive. The new EDGE Tech 32GB DiskGO Flash Drive is priced at around $400.

The EDGE Tech 32GB DiskGO Flash Drive is capable, according to EDGE Tech, of storing more than 21,000 pictures, 32 hours of video, 8,000 songs, or 320,000 documents. This USB drive is capable of a transfer rate upwards of 480Mb/second and comes with a preview version of some encryption software.

Zip Zip Memory Bricks are small USB 2.0 Flash memory drives encased inside a Lego-type toy building brick. When the cap is on they appear like a normal toy brick, but pulling one half of the brick apart exposes the USB 2.0 connector. They come in colors of green, yellow, blue, red, black or white, much like Lego bricks do, and have a capacity of 1GB.

The Memory Bricks also have a lanyard attached to make them harder to lose and easier to identify should you happen to drop it into a pile of regular toy bricks. The company says you can stack memory bricks just like you would with regular toy bricks, but what would be cooler is if the memory would stack up as well!

If you are looking for the ultimate in security for a new thumb drive take a gander at the IronKey, the military’s solution to keeping their secrets safe. The IronKey is made to be both tough physically as well as data attacks.

For starters it encrypts your password using 256-bit AES and then encrypts that info a second time using 128-bit encryption. It may sound like overkill but heck why not do it? If a hacker wants to try and guess your password they only get 10 tries before the IronKey destroys all of the data it contains. If the villain tries to pop the drive open and get at the chips inside he will have a next-to-impossible task pulling it out in one piece since the guts are coated with an epoxy and would gum up the removal process.

USB flash drives come in all shapes and sized these days, and not even a lego brick can escape it.

A Australian company called Zip Zip has created a 1GB USB flash memory thumb drive out of small Lego bricks just to add a little fun to you data storage needs.

This design makes me wonder if you could stack these bricks together, and something that would be really cool is if by stacking them you could expand the memory. But for now I think they are just regular Lego bricks with a flash drive built in.

The Lego USB flash drive comes in six colors of yellow, blue, red, white, black and green and retails for just under $49 ($59 AUD).

ZipZip via Giz

For all of you heavy duty survivor types out there that need dependable technology for your spelunking, deep-sea diving or any other fun pastimes, Corsair claims to have created the world’s toughest flash drive.

The Flash Survivor sounds like it could survive a boat sinking or building detonation: it’s water resistant to a depth of 200 meters (or 20 atmospheres), encased in durable industrial grade aluminum, protected by a ring of rubber molding and surrounded by a metal tube with two end caps. In short, if you’re taking this USB drive anywhere where you really start to question whether it will come back in working condition you’ve probably got a death wish.

The Flash Survivor comes in 4 GB ($59.99) and 8 GB ($129.99) models, has a 10 year warranty and also has a 256 bit AES security encryption application pre-loaded to further protect …

A report released from Prudential Equity Group recently indicated that Apple may scrap plans for the next generation hard drive based iPod in favor of using NAND flash memory instead. The change according to the report would result in smaller players and improvements in battery life and durability.

NAND flash memory is a very common source of memory for small thumb drives and memory cards, and is a type of non-volatile memory. Non-volatile memory means that it does not need a continuous power source to retain its data, and NAND flash memory is a durable design that works well for long-term use.

Using the flash memory for iPods would also mean less required power since there are no moving parts, and with the continuing improvements in flash technology the devices can be built smaller without compromising …