Upping the Gigabytes
Another thing I always keep an eye on is the increasing storage capacity of flash drives. It is interesting to see how much USB storage we might be able to avail ourselves of in the near future.
Now that 128GB and 256GB are out as the highest current capabilities one has to wonder what will be next. As amazing as this new breakthrough is I wouldn’t hold my breath. Because recently I heard that there’s even a 512GB flash drive out there. Supposedly only made by one manufacturer and not for commercial application. Military perhaps? Super-secret agents? I have no idea if its true but if you know anything about this please grace us with your feedback. But only if you won’t have to get terminated then…
…on eBay right now:
[wordbay]ssd +(512 GB,1024 GB) -(mb,apple)[/wordbay]
or
Click here to find more High Capacity Flash Drives
October 25th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Those memory sticks are still a big expensive…
October 26th, 2009 at 1:11 am
True, but both drives have already seen a decrease in price since their arrival.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
There is no such thing as a Kingston 512GB flash drive and the DataTraveler 400 is a discontinued drive that was never made in 256GB capacity. These are fakes that will trash users’ files.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:21 am
Hi fraudbuster,
I wasn’t referring to Kingston. I don’t know which company or institution may be in possession of a 512GB flash drive, it’s just a rumor I came across. I never heard of the DataTraveler 400, but there is the genuine Kingston DataTraveler 300 which indeed holds 256GB. You can be sure I only show genuine brand models on my site.
December 9th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
USB 2.0 Brand New 512GB Flash Memory Drive Pendrive — Are you sure this isn’t fake??
December 9th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Hi Andy,
see my reply to Fraudbuster. I know there are fake ones out there claiming 512GB but the one I’m mentioning in my post supposedly isn’t commercial (yet).
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:25 pm
sony 512 gb is a FAKE!
Warning to the ebayer!
February 4th, 2010 at 2:38 am
Yes folks, always be careful regarding fakes on ebay. You can read more about such occurences in my 128GB flash drive post.
March 6th, 2010 at 4:17 am
I purchased a 512 GB Kingston USB drive from a merchant in China. Big mistake! It formats ok but wont write any files. Itll either freeze or give me an error message. Totally unusable junk! So I learned the hard way that there is no 512 GB out there yet.
March 8th, 2010 at 1:31 am
Sammich,
Im sorry to hear that. But even “legitimate” capacities like 128GB or 256GB are being hijacked by fraudsters (see my post on these ). Dont be seduced by a cheap price.
July 10th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Hey Guys!
Here is a 2 TB card, though it is not a true “stick.” With the right adapter/ card thing, you could use it as one, though. Couldn’t find any actual sticks that were 2 Tb, though I did find a 1 TB. (see my last report for the latter).
.-= Spawn Happy Jake´s last blog post ..The iChatr App Brings Chatroulette-Style Mischief to Your iPhone 4 IPhone Apps =-.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Spawn,
according to the comments of your author link these dont really exist yet and its probably going to be years before they do. Still cool though.
October 19th, 2010 at 12:06 am
Hmmm. Question: If I have a 512GB usb flash memory stick (I use the term stick loosly) will the USB 2.0 be the bottle neck when writing or reading from it? It would seem better to make it a SATA or something like that rather than a USB (2.0 or 3.0)
October 20th, 2010 at 1:25 am
MrSmoker, I think it would depend on the file size. If it was a 510GB video (haha), yeah I’m sure the 2.0 couldnt handle that. Seriously, file size can be a real issue, anything from 4GB on. Unless the flash drive and OS are formatted correctly. I’m not sure what exactly you mean with “bottle neck” but since one point of having a 512GB USB flash drive would be to carry large files then it definitely would make sense to only release them with a very high speed standard. Personally I think USB 3.0 would do the job which is actually faster than SATA. In theory anyway. Who knows, maybe they will have a USB/eSATA combination like the OCZ Throttle or Kanguru e-Flash?
November 10th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
You can think what you want, but USB memory with 512GB and 1TB are coming anyway. And you can use it with USB 2.0 also. The memory it self is not fast enogh to handle USB 3.0 speed fully out. There was some e-sata memory’s, but they was dissaphere i think. There are mostly used USB.
January 6th, 2011 at 9:21 am
One big bottleneck of USB 2.0 is that it cannot read and write at the same time (has to cache a good bit, especially if using an OS off of and saving files to one). USB 3.0 can READ AND WRITE AT THE SAME TIME!!! Woo!
But I have to say that DT was only partly right. USB 3.0 is faster than SATA revisions I & II, but USB 3.0 is not faster than SATA revision III. The SATA revisions progressively double: rev I @ 1.5 Gb/s, rev II @ 3 Gb/s, and rev III @ 6 Gb/s. USB 3.0 is @ 5 Gb/s (10x faster than 2.0 which is 0.5 Gb/s). These are gigabits per second, not gigabytes per second. 8 bits in a byte, so divide speeds by 8 to get gigabytes per second.
And why is there a WEIRD link in a box under my other reply? It’s creeping me out. That link leads to a website I’ve never been to before.
Note: Intel Peak is going to kick USB 3.0′s behind! It goes 100 Gb/second…compare that to USB 3.0′s 5 Gb/s. And if a SATA rev IV came out, it would be 12 Gb/s, which still would slaughter USB 3.0. It would seems like it would take a speed config’d RAID of SSDs to take in that 100 gigabits per second, lol! And the RAID controller circuitry would have to be made of what? Graphene? Doped diamond? Lol. Software RAID ain’t cuttin’ that.
January 7th, 2011 at 12:07 am
Jake,
thank you for your very thorough insight! It sure is going to be interesting to watch developments in the near future. As for that link in the box,
that is what the commentluv feature picked up – and it does lead to that site. Gizmodo is the url you gave for your author field so commentluv then parses that site for the last blog post and also links to that.
January 7th, 2011 at 10:43 am
I’m pretty sure I reported this back in July 2010, but just so that everyone has a link:
1024GB USB Flash Drive
It’s not a true hyperlink, if you want to use it you’ll have to copy and paste into the address bar… unless the magic parsing fairy visits my web writings again :p, lol. It’s a link to where you can buy a one TB thumb drive. Maybe you have to be a dealer or something though. If it’s a scam, I applaud the scammers because they did a GREAT job of making it look like a ligit site. It connects with Made-In-China.com and everything. Highly doubt it’s a fake.
Weird link issue is at peace with me now, thanks, DT.
Where did the report field go? What if someone wants to report a cool thumb drive? Just post it here?
January 8th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Hi Jake,
) because I cant find it anymore. Its likely that I actually didnt publish it in the first place because I dont want to give scammers any room. So yeah, I’m still convinced this is a scam. Why? Because there is no official 1024GB USB Flash Drive out, neither brand nor generic – not even a 512MB. All the 1024GB links you find on google are something from China. Quite suspicious, dont you think? Especially in light of the fact that all the previous existing capacity fakes (64GB, 128GB, 256GB, etc) came mostly from China too – even as brands (see my 128GB post for reference). But hey, if you want to be fooled by some “legit looking site” made in China, go for it. Buy one of those babies, try to fill it up to 1024GB and then report back to us, ok? I’ll be more than happy to stand corrected. 
Im glad you reposted that 1TB thumb drive link (and yes, the “fairy” knows how to turn that url into a link automatically
p.s.: I dont think I ever had a “report field” on my site?
January 10th, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Thanks for the info. I just didn’t know what you were basing that off of (that it’s a scam). Now knowing that there have been other China scams, and that all the 1024GB thumb drive links go to China is pretty interesting info.
I tried Googling “Made-in-China.com scam” and a few things came up at the bottom of the page that looked relevant. I then tried “newegg.com scam” and “walmart.com scam” (two places that are for sure okay) and you get a whole page of links as well. So, if you look, someone will always call anything a scam. You of course have some evidence though – not putting you in that category of a false alarmer. I’m just writing that from the perspective of trying to find valid verification that Made-in-China.com is a scam – without having to risk buying a thumb drive from them (not that I would even want one with that high of a capacity; I’d lose it).
That EVERY link of a 1024GB thumb drive goes to China is interesting. If it weren’t a scam, you’d think at least a couple would go elsewhere. Then again, if it wasn’t a scam, it makes sense that China would make them, because just about everything seems to be made in China (I know, it’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean). Of U.S bought products, it seems as though most come from China.
BTW, I like the USB 3.0 stuff on the main page.
January 10th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Ok, this one is just sad:
new flash drive holds 50 terabytes
(Go Hyperlink Fairy!)
Lost credibility with me in first paragraph when they said 10,000 gigabytes to a terabyte. They just don’t have an idea what they are talking about there. Everyone knows its 1,000 GB to a TB. Maybe the rest is correct though, idk. I would excuse it as a typo, but they had a comma in “10,000,” so no, it’s just wrong.
January 11th, 2011 at 11:02 pm
Thanks for sharing that article, Jake. I too have my doubts about that whole story on information storing proteins – but you never know, anything is possible! Only the future will tell…
March 30th, 2011 at 12:49 am
Irvine Sensors
is selling 512Gb and 1TB USB 3.0 thumb drives.
This is for real no scam. There pricing is comparative to what a 512GB and 1024GB SSD are selling for but in a small form factor!
April 4th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Anonymous,
where are they selling those capacities? Are you referring to their Vault drives? Unfortunately the site doesnt seem to give any specs, let lone pricing. The company looks genuine…but the site is a bit primitive?
April 7th, 2011 at 3:08 am
i have started using a 512 gig flash stick i bought in albrta. its in exFAT format or somtimes call FAT64. it only works on windows vista or higher or on the Mac os. yopu can download a patch from Microsoft so they can be read in XP.
moves a little slow in the transfer, but works great!
April 9th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Interesting, Alan. Can you disclose who the manufacturer is? And did you verify that it can actually hold 512GB of data? Thanks.
April 19th, 2011 at 2:04 am
its a no namer i got through a friend imported from India- I ran it through a software program that tests memory capacity and after two days (yes two days) it came up as just under 513 gig. I was also originally forced to reformat my first one when I put it in an XP box and fouled it up. using Vista to format it completed at just under 513 gig. so far it hasn’t crashed or lost anything I put on it but I still havent filled it to capacity. So good. I am trying to contact the seller and if i can get any i will put on Kijiji.
April 23rd, 2011 at 11:29 am
Interesting, Alan. Im thinking that the software could be tricked…so again the real test will be putting “physical” 512GB worth of data on there.
May 6th, 2011 at 10:43 pm
A no-namer? What is it’s hardware name? What operating systems do you have available to you? I know in Windows you can go into Device Manager, right-click a device, go to properties, then some tab…the ID tab or something, forget what it’s called (or something like that). (Not in Windows right now, or I’d find out). In there is a bunch of IDs, like the hardware name, and I think maybe even the Manufacturer. Linux has various vices to find stuff like that, I’m sure. Maybe a lsusb would do it. I’m in Mac OS right now, and I just hit the Apple logo, then “About This Mac” then “More Info”. Then a window is brought up. In the left pane, under hardware, I hit USB. I see USB 2.0 FD under USB High-Speed Bus (what it says for you will probably be different). I click that, and it gives me info such as Vendor ID (PNY Technologies Inc.) Have you tried any of that? Then you could Google the vendor.
June 21st, 2011 at 3:20 am
It’s really cool that the flash memory usb are getting smaller and smaller everyday while the capacity keeps bigger and bigger. I wonder what the future holds for these gadgets.
June 27th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
There is a 512gb flash drive at DHGate.
July 13th, 2011 at 5:07 pm
Anoyamous (how fitting), that website’s title says: “Buy China Wholesale Products from Chinese Wholesalers on DHgate.com”. Their 512GB flash drives start at 12$. Suuuure…
July 18th, 2011 at 3:17 am
Bought a “Kingston DT310 512GB” in Thailand. This was in a mall, where it looked professional enough to be the real deal.
And that’s how I lost all my vacation pictures.
I love Kingston all the way, but F**K fraudsters!
September 11th, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Hello, i found this today . articulo.mercadolibre.com.mx/MLM-69580332-increibles-memorias-usb-sony-vaio-de-impactantes-512gb-_JM but i can´t find info about this USB in the sony site. if you found something, please say it to me.
September 15th, 2011 at 2:35 am
Ok, to answer the original question: Yes, there is a 512GB flash drive that is being sold by Kingston to the U.S. Government – only. I work for the Department of Defense in the Middle East and our department has five of them. We purchase them for a little over $1000 USD.
September 16th, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Edwin,
if its not on the official manufacturer website its most likely fake.
November 1st, 2011 at 3:25 pm
I have three 512Gb Kingston flashdrives DT310 bought from China and wish greatly to sell them for about $350 because of that talks about fraud or U.S.Government and so on. I don’t even unpack them.
November 12th, 2011 at 7:05 pm
I have 15 512 GB kingston USB DT310 bought from china. I want to sell for appx.US$ 400 per piece.
December 19th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Just returned from a business trip to Shanghai last week. I found a small shop selling Kingston 512GB drives for 100RMB ($8 USD). The employee plugged them into a laptop to prove that they worked. I was in a hurry and didn’t purchase any. I am scheduled to go back in a couple of months. I will buy a couple and report what I find. Also want to get a couple of the SSD drives while there. At this price, it’s worth it just to play.
December 20th, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Why are my posts being rejected? Is someone afraid I might uncover a scam?
December 21st, 2011 at 12:52 am
I would advice against buying those MDCWLAF. They are usually flash drives with a much lower capacity so yeah, they will work when plugged in. And they also usually set up a fake properties screen that shows it has 512GB. The real test is to use your own computer and transfer 512GB actual data. See my 128GB post for reference.
December 27th, 2011 at 12:18 am
Your comment did get posted, dude. (look above) As for scams, please see my reply to your comment.
February 25th, 2012 at 11:20 am
i have a kingston 512 gb buy in thailand.
March 19th, 2012 at 4:46 am
I’m in Thailand right now and at Pantip Market (big electronics market) i found severals stands that sold Kingston 512 GB USB sticks for approx 5000 Bath (approx 160 USD)
How can i test these there?
I do have a laptop with me, but upploading 512 GB to it wil take a lot of time, besides i do not have 512 GB in my Laptop.
Any help will be greatly appriciated.
/thaiTurist
May 15th, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Thaiturist,
your best bet would be to do some research on the net – also in thai if possible. That should give you a clue if these are fake or not. But most likely they are – because if they weren’t you would have heard of this amazing new flash drive all over the net by now.
October 10th, 2012 at 7:48 am
Just got back from China on buisiness. Little electronics shop in one of the markets. The owner threw a 512gB flash drive in front of me. $250 HK dollars (devide by 7.7 to get US). The price was non negotiable. Odd thing that almost everything else in the market was except for the stuff in his store.
Thanks,
Jay
October 10th, 2012 at 7:50 am
Correction. The price was $550 HK.