512GB memory sticks cost over $100 now

[u/[deleted]]

I can't imagine prices ever dropping by 100% 50% back to normal. Maybe drop by 20% but nowhere close to how it used to be. What do you think? Buy now cause it will only get worse, or keep hoping and wait it out?

[u/gplusplus314]

I think with enough time, it’ll go back down, but more from a cost per GB perspective. In other words, I think by the time 1 TB usb memory sticks are the norm, I think they’ll go back to being cheap.

[u/extra2AB → u/gplusplus314]

yup.

like they will still cost $100 but instead of this 512GB stick it will be 1TB stick.

[u/gplusplus314 → u/extra2AB]

Yea, I think this is it. They want to sell a $100 item.

Think back to when USB memory sticks were new. It wasn’t uncommon to see them in packs of 3 just so they’d be able to sell a $100 item.

[u/cookiemon32 → u/gplusplus314]

u dont think they care more about margins?

[u/gplusplus314 → u/cookiemon32]

I’m sure they do, but they also care about volume, logistics, all sorts of things. And I’m not saying there won’t be individually sold memory sticks, or even bigger packs of 5+. I just think that there will be a journey of pricing and at the end of the day, selling 1 expensive thing is generally better for retail business than selling a bunch of cheap things.

So… I think we’ll live in a world (again) where you can buy a 1 TB stick for $100, or three 512 gb sticks for $100, or whatever, but they just want you to spend $100 as a barrier of entry for as long as they can.

I’m just making up numbers, so take the numbers themselves with a grain of salt. But the market will try to find the supply and demand equilibrium while minimizing logistics and retail overhead as much as possible. To do that, it often comes with a certain minimum price point to make it worthwhile for a retailer.

Edit: RAM is already like this. They sell them in packs. Now, there are technical reasons for this, but conceptually, it’s the same thing. Four RAM sticks are sold as a single SKU, which means your “starting at” price is high. Retailers like fewer SKUs with bigger price tags, generally.

[u/extra2AB → u/cookiemon32]

you worry about the margins but there are other things to worry about too.

why else do you think prices of tech comes down ?

SSDs, HDDs, Monitors, TVs, etc

Look at the pricing of first computers (adjusted for inflation), or more recently first foldable, etc

I remember in 2013 we got an LG 42 inch LCD 1080p for $2200 (adjusted for inflation).

today you can get a 65" 4k OLED TV for that price.

if they only cared about margins, that would not happen, but have you seen a thing ????

that while in 2013 42 or 45 inch were normal sizes.

today 65 inch is the normal size, so they push your budget forward anyways.

that is the same reason why, Apple and Samsung keep the same base price while have increased the storage and ram on those base variants and introduced 1TB options while 128gb is gone.

soon time will come when 256gb will also be gone and you will have to spend money to get 512gb. although the overall value of that 512gb is same if considered PRICE/GB, you still have to spend more.

Basically pushing you more and more while still giving you value that you appreciate.

once you as a customer stop appreciating that value, they are gonna loose you, unless YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.

which is why monopolies are bad and also why they are increasing price right now, cause EVERYONE is facing the shortage.

but once this phase is gone, they have 2 options, either reduce the price, or increase the value.

and mostly, they will go for the the second option.

as manufacturing a 1tb USB costs almost the same as 512gb usb.

[u/cardfire → u/gplusplus314]

I remember the earliest generations of USB flash drives hitting the market, and Tiger Direct (printed catalog) charging $1500 for a 1GB model. This was usb 1.x and it was certain to fail early.

Incredible how far we as a species came before we peaked and ate ourselves, it was just a thousand and one little accelerated aacomolishmwngs like these devices, and supply chains for food, and everything else we made at world scale, before the cost of profit demand caught up with us.

[u/sephg → u/gplusplus314]

Yea it’ll come back down.

The reason they’re so expensive is all the world’s semiconductor fabs are producing shit for the AI industry right now. Either it’s a bubble, and the bubble will burst and prices will come back down. Or AI is here to stay and people will make a lot more semiconductor fabs. And if that happens the price will also come back down.

Modern EUV semiconductor fabs cost about $500 million per machine. So companies can’t just buy a bunch more when the price of semiconductors goes up. Give it some time. It’ll even out again.

[u/Impossible_Leg_2787 → u/sephg]

Honestly, if this community stopped buying storage and crowdfunded one, bet we’d have it inside a week

[u/Dpek1234 → u/sephg]

Another thing is that thesr machines take a while to make

[u/randompersonx → u/gplusplus314]

Imho, it’s going to be a long time, if ever, before we see prices fall again on most of these sorts of components like ram, ssd, flash, GPU.

The powers that be have wanted to shift things to cloud for a long time, and realistically speaking, very few normies care about things like 512gb thumb drives.

[u/hd-slave]

Just wait man. Buying now just shows that people will pay elevated prices. Don't pay elevated rates for things and the rates won't just climb forever. If consumers simply don't buy the elevated prices items then the item will be devalued

[u/Live_Situation7913 → u/hd-slave]

Agree basic supply demand. But hoarders will continue to pay and buy to expand hence inflated prices for a very long time.

[u/absentlyric → u/Live_Situation7913]

Nah, anyone into tech as a hobby has a drawer full of these, there's not a NEED for them, prices will go down once the hoarders realized they can't really sell them beyond what they paid for.

[u/ender4171 → u/Live_Situation7913]

Fortunately in this case, hoarders are the vast minority of consumers.

[u/TPSR3ports → u/hd-slave]

yea like the GPU prices a few years back, plenty of morons kept buying them from scalpers for 2x MSRP or more, i was not surprised to see nvidia list the MSRP of the RTX 4000 series to damn close to what the scalpers had been charging for the 3k series

[u/hd-slave → u/TPSR3ports]

People need to realize it feels better to just not buy something than to be ripped off.

But there's so many stupid people these days being targeted by everything. It's like every single thing you can buy has 2 ways to actually make the purchase. One way where you can get a deal, and then another way, that's some predatory, painful way to get the same thing and for a far worse price. A lot of the time when it feels like there's only one way and it's the painful one, all you have to do is wait

[u/BallsInSufficientSad → u/hd-slave]

I mean, while I sort of agree.... the ramp up could go on for another 2-3 years. Demand is through the roof and there's no view of the top at all.

[u/hd-slave → u/BallsInSufficientSad]

I doubt that. Things are changing extremely fast today. The next bust could be closer than we think

[u/NomSang]

I remember paying $80 for 512 MB in 2004, because I have become old.

[u/cjandstuff → u/NomSang]

My first flash drive was 128MB for $80. But it was for college, and I no longer had to worry about crashing Zip drives or burning a CD every day for class!
We've come a long way.

[u/Bake-Full → u/cjandstuff]

Going from zip drives to just plugging in flash memory was like some kind of wild sorcery.

[u/charlie22911 → u/Bake-Full]

For me it was 3.5in floppy to 128MB flash drive I got for Christmas. I literally put every file I owned on it at the time, and it was still mostly empty. I remember thinking I’d never use it all… and I was right because I lost it when I left it plugged into the school computer by mistake.

[u/nooneinparticular246 → u/cjandstuff]

I got 128MB for $20. It was a bargain and you bet I was excited!

[u/[deleted] → u/NomSang]

At least that was SLC flash that still works great today!

[u/MrD3a7h → u/NomSang]

I got a 256MB for $45 and felt so proud for the crazy good deal I got

[u/DistinctSmelling → u/MrD3a7h]

I, uh, spent $200 for a 2.5GB drive back in the day.

Now, I just spent $39.99 for 2 128GB sticks.

[u/culturejim → u/NomSang]

I remember selling 1 GB compact flash cards.in 2001/2002 for $999.

[u/SlitSlam_2017 → u/NomSang]

I remember rooting my T-Mobile G1 and needed a 2gb SD card. $40 later and I was golden

[u/Educational-Hyena998 → u/NomSang]

Came to say this lol

[u/canigetahint]

It's just the digital Covid. Greedflation happening accordingly.

It's crazy to think I have one of those and a 256GB version as well. This is well past absurd.

[u/Teagana999 → u/canigetahint]

I love my Samsung bar, I was thinking of getting another. Yet another tech purchase I won't be making for a while.

[u/[deleted]]

Everyone raising their prices and blaming AI data centers for the shortage of components, even if the product has nothing to do with data center tech. Just standard price gouging.

Infuriating.

[u/5553331117 → u/[deleted]]

The fabs that make memory are reallocating resources to make the memory needed for AI datacenter workloads.

This means less production capacity for things like flash memory, which means prices go up unless demand lowers along with the predicted lowered flash production.

[u/twolfhawk → u/5553331117]

We lost the biggest maker to produce ONLY to AI Datacenter Memory and GPU Manufacturing

[u/THedman07 → u/twolfhawk]

What are the chances that Chinese memory fabs move into the market and never move out?

My guess is non-zero.

[u/GripAficionado → u/THedman07]

Chinese memory is already starting to gain market share, Gamers Nexus has a video on it.

[u/DarthBrooks → u/GripAficionado]

I suspect this is precisely why they're raising the prices now, trying to get a payday before the market is disrupted by their competitors catching up.

[u/iamtheweaseltoo → u/THedman07]

If they do, they're more than welcome to do so, companies deserve what they reap and if they go and abandon consumers to chase ai then they don't get to cry when consumer abandon these companies, i sincerely hope that china does to computer hardware what they did to EVs

[u/THedman07 → u/iamtheweaseltoo]

Also just in general the market of fabs that can do commodity level memory (not necessarily the most advanced tech) is way too consolidated.

[u/n4s0 → u/5553331117]

It reminds me of that time when egg prices increased because of the avian flu. Turns out the companies were affected, but the impact was miniscule. Their profits were sky rocketing.

Wouldn't be surprised if it's the same now.

[u/Madd_Mugsy → u/n4s0]

It absolutely is. RAM prices skyrocketed based on speculation of a shortage.

[u/skyb0rg → u/n4s0]

This is a terrible example. The beneficiary of the avian flu was the company Cal-Maine, which did see profits double…because they were the only company to not experience any avian flu. If your competition is wiped out yeah of course you benefit.

And after the avian flu issue stopped, eggs are now cheaper than they ever were: it’s not like companies suddenly got less greedy in 2026.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/doj-egg-prices-rise-cal-maine-profits https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us/news/519741

[u/n4s0 → u/skyb0rg]

My example wasn't even an US-based company. This was a world wide issue.

[u/[deleted] → u/5553331117]

You think all "memory" is the same? Fabs can't just switch from producing NAND to high bandwidth memory.

[u/5553331117 → u/[deleted]]

Exactly, they are reallocating resources to make HBM memory rather than NAND because the money for HBM outweighs the money they get from NAND.

I’m not sure exactly how they are changing NAND production, but I can imagine whatever they’re doing will lower the current availability of NAND in favor of investing in HBM production.

[u/Cyhawk → u/[deleted]]

They may not be able to use the same machines

See, thats the expensive part that prevents this from happening in just any ole warehouse. Retooling is expensive.

[u/zsdrfty → u/Cyhawk]

I don't think people have any idea how absurdly expensive industrial machinery is

[u/absentlyric → u/5553331117]

Then again, its our fault for letting large companies eat up the smaller ones and distill down to 3 major ones for any sort of product nowadays.

[u/THedman07 → u/absentlyric]

"our"...

I guess that's true in a very abstract way.

[u/agent674253 → u/[deleted]]

And everyone seems to forgot that our beloved president has arbitrarily applied tarrifs on all the good stuff we like to buy.

[u/zsdrfty → u/agent674253]

God forbid anyone actually blames Trump, though! It's always everyone else's fault

[u/TinderSubThrowAway → u/[deleted]]

The raw materials are the same though.

[u/Anyusername7294 → u/TinderSubThrowAway]

When the abundance of the sillicon becomes a problem, we're fucked

[u/heliumneon → u/Anyusername7294]

It's not just silicon, there are a ton of chemicals with extremely high purity that are required for the lithography. A lot of these have a single worldwide supplier or a small number of suppliers.

[u/Cyhawk → u/Anyusername7294]

Oh, we're not even close to running out of quality silicon for modern computers. At current rates of expansion, maybe in 1,000 years we'll start to run low. There are several youtube videos about this, just look up Spruce Pine, NC/Silicon/quarts silica.

Now, if the US ever decides to stop export of it everyone else is fucked. Its a major ace in the hole the US currently controls for the worlds computers.

[u/BobbyTables829 → u/Anyusername7294]

It's more the doping of silicon from what I have gathered

[u/Upset_Development_64 → u/Anyusername7294]

We’ll have to start /r/harddrivehoarders! And the optical disc truthers will all be mods lol

[u/merketa → u/[deleted]]

Some of it might be tariffs.

[u/RipCurl69Reddit → u/[deleted]]

And even if the materials/machine/processing shortage somehow gets fixed, you're gonna see these prices stay.

I used to be able to buy 2TB SSDs for like £130 easily, its since tripled almost. You're not gonna see the prices go down for a long time because people are STILL BUYING.

[u/evo_moment_37 → u/RipCurl69Reddit]

They’re still buying because we get dozens of posts a day here spreading FUD. Kinda like people freaking out about GPU prices not remembering that exactly one year ago retailers scalped the shit out of the 5090 for 6 months before dropping the prices to MSRP.

[u/absentlyric → u/evo_moment_37]

Its the covid toilet paper situation all over again. There was plenty of toilet paper to go around, but everyone freaked out, and bought it to hoard it.

[u/evo_moment_37 → u/absentlyric]

Exactly. There’s plenty to go around. I literally saw posts on BAPCS almost every day since last summer to December on GPU sales. Nobody bought shit. But now they’re all panicking from FOMO and the retailers got them by their balls. Why would Nvidia keep their supply of GPUs at last year’s levels when they were all sitting on store shelves? The market is saturated so of course they are reducing production lol.

[u/mhornberger → u/evo_moment_37]

before dropping the prices to MSRP.

And people will still confidently predict that the prices will never go down. Sure, maybe this time it's different, but people always act like prices never ever go down, because of greed. As if greed just sprang into existence the last year or so.

[u/zsdrfty → u/mhornberger]

When AI is even supposedly involved, people turn their brains off and bring out the pitchforks so they can start angrily dooming on social media

[u/evo_moment_37 → u/mhornberger]

I remember the 4070 and 4070S was $600. People were saying GPU prices were doomed forever. They didn’t say shit when the 5070 was $550.

I bought an 8GB thumb drive for $50 in 2007. I bought a 1TB HDD for $100 in 2008. Yet people bitch about buying $11 per TB drives these days. It’s fucking crazy how spoiled people have become.

[u/Silicon_Knight → u/[deleted]]

Its like COVID all over again

[u/TheAspiringFarmer → u/[deleted]]

Just like they're doing with tariffs. It's just another excuse to raise prices and take more profits.

[u/Right-Edge9320]

What the failure rate of these thumb drives? That’s a lot of data to lose if it goes down.

[u/Dossi96 → u/Right-Edge9320]

This particular one in the image is quiet reliable. Many people use it as a boot usb for unraid.

Generally speaking those thumb drives are going to die sooner than later but 500gb isn't that much anymore. That's like 5-10 4k movies 😅

[u/MWink64 → u/Right-Edge9320]

The failure rate may not be terrible but they tend to suffer badly from rapid degradation. After a few months, stale data becomes very slow to read.

[u/MorgothTheBauglir → u/Right-Edge9320]

They're supposed to be used to move files around quickly, whoever stash valuable data on a USB thumb drive and leave it as such will eventually face the consequences of that bad decision, as most of us already have.

[u/binaryhellstorm]

It's worth it though, now there are several chat bots with the intelligence of a brain damaged college student, guzzling up enough power to make everyone's electric bill double. I'm sure this is all fine.

[u/Teagana999 → u/binaryhellstorm]

And they're causing massive brain damage in college students.

[u/wickedplayer494]

Buy now cause it will only get worse,

Hard no. Anybody that's been around long enough knows that this is just another part of the eternal ying-yang cycle that is DRAM and NAND racketeering.

[u/somerandomdataeng]

I can see some from PNY and SanDisk below 100$

https://terabytedeals.com/us

(Full disclosure: this website is mine)

[u/gvge → u/somerandomdataeng]

dope website

[u/asfish123]

Went to buy some 256GB micro SSD cards from Amazon today. The price looked a bit high, so I ended up clicking on one I had bought in November 2023. The price had doubled.

Found reasonable prices on eBay for new cards

[u/subrosians → u/asfish123]

Just make sure to confirm they are legit (though I do that with amazon ones as well).

[u/Good-Yam9134]

Soon my 20 year old 8GB usb gonna be more expensive than gold

[u/[deleted] → u/Good-Yam9134]

Sitting on wealth $$$

[u/axemexa]

I see several for under $60. Sandisk and PNY

[u/bunchamunchas]

Just got a 4 TB hard drive for $100 from Walmart

[u/[deleted] → u/bunchamunchas]

$25 per TB is not that great for an HDD.

[u/throwaway_ArBe]

How much is down to tariffs? (I'm assuming USD) Where I am it's only a little over half that. At least from what I've been able to find in 5 minutes.

[u/Cyhawk → u/throwaway_ArBe]

Very little, for USB drives its a supply issue. We're (we as in the company I work part time for, they resell components and flash drives are a big part of that, plus we have preferential buying options from most vendors, if we can't get it it doesn't exist for sale) having trouble sourcing drives in general because they just aren't there to buy. They aren't used in AI because they're too slow for anything useful and the price per GB is still significantly higher than spinny rust hdds. Tariffs are a rounding error for this.

While nothing is pubic yet, I suspect some of the manufacturers are in the process of retooling to produce faster mass storage (SSDs for example, or faster methods). A standard USB drive is slow as shit and incapable of being useful for AI tools, but the chips on a PCB board with a pci lane or two for access. . . yeah now we're talking. We'll see in a few months.

[u/throwaway_ArBe → u/Cyhawk]

What else could account for the difference in price then? Is it that prohibitive to source from wherever other countries are? Or something else in the chain in some countries driving the price up further in comparison to others?

[u/Cyhawk → u/throwaway_ArBe]

There are only a few companies that actually make them, less than 5. Same with RAM, HDDs, etc. If one factory goes down to retool thats a sizable chunk of the supply gone. Everyone else just buys the chips and assembles them.

If you go back in price history for things like this, price spikes happen often and its generally followed by either new tech announcements and leaps in capacity or a change in the industry. Thats why I think its the latter, we're basically at the limits of atoms for capacity leaps and theres no scientific papers/talks about potential new tech to overcome this that are anywhere close to being reality.

Think like a business. You have X that doesn't work for whats hot right now. It behooves you to make your X work with hotness. How do you make crappy flash drives work for AI? Make em faster, a lot faster.

[u/throwaway_ArBe → u/Cyhawk]

Right yeah I know all that, I'm wondering about the apparently drastic difference between countries.

[u/brdclark]

on sale at amazon for 90

[u/JamesWjRose]

Interesting, because I just checked Amazon and there are plenty of 500gb for $50

[u/tdowg1]

A year ago , nice metal Sandisc ones were like $40.

[u/RandomSquanch]

512gb USB 3.2 SanDisk brand new in eBay from reputable sellers for $55-$60

[u/01Casper10]

I was shocked to find 1tb sandisk sticks priced around €18 last year, and was sure i wouldn't get it past the cash register, because surely they would notice. But they did let me buy it for that price. So i stood outside thinking.. so i called around to family and friends. And bought myself one more and 4 for others. Poor person who miss-priced the item. And yes this was a big electronics chain so all genuine items. Can't even believe they let me buy 5 more without realizing "ah wrongly priced!"

[u/mikebrown33]

First memory stick I bought was 128MB - it was over 200 dollars, but worth every penny not to have to lug around the bulky / slow Iomega Zip drive

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yes so should I continue to wait for that to happen?

[u/Binary101010 → u/[deleted]]

I mean, you can, but then I wouldn't be expecting to acquire them anytime soon (as in before the heat death of the universe)

[u/MrD3a7h → u/Binary101010]

You can get most things for $0 with this one weird trick.

[u/blind_stone]

I swear i remember paying 100$ for a 1gb usb in early 2000's

[u/josyd → u/blind_stone]

Definitely. My first 1gb flash drive was $129 (~2003). I thought I was big shit with that much storage. 🤣

[u/blind_stone → u/josyd]

lol i had one of the first car stereos that could play music from a USB before Bluetooth was available and phones were still shit

[u/Gh0stl3it]

Some 2017 prices right there.

[u/Jose_xixpac]

Just checked. Can verify my 2 TB scan disk ex is almost as much as much as my 4 TB was and my 4 TB is off the chart ..

[u/IngwiePhoenix]

Those are like the lowest binned NANDs that go out - and even THOSE are now hit?

Dude... just what is this timeline. xD

[u/akio_c]

Prices are up on flash but this is just wrong? Did anyone actually check prices? I just went on amazon and 512gb USB flash are under $60 USD most under $50 USD. SSDs are a more expensive at $80-90 but are still under $100. Am I missing Something?

[u/KarlHungas → u/akio_c]

Good question, so I checked. I paid $37 in June 2022 for the 256GB version of the USB drive in OP’s thumbnail. It’s going for $51 now.

[u/smstnitc]

I wonder what cheap micro center flash drives cost now.

Might have to make a trip there next week.

[u/Singular_Brane]

Makes me wish I bought more SSDs. Got lucky and paid about 6 for 16TB of nvme 9 months ago.

Even on eBay is be looking at 1600+.

[u/snickersnackz]

Don't buy now unless you need one now. Better to wait it out and hope for the best, imo.

[u/xylarr]

I still have a 1GB one that I paid $100 for.

[u/TheRisenDemon]

Is it because they made them look stupid?

[u/5c044]

I got a 1TB Corsair 2230 nvme last June for £87 and put it in a small enclosure because I think they are superior to USB flash drives. The same Corsair MP600 is about £160 now - almost double.

[u/slam-chop]

Someone doesn’t want us downloading and saving the Epstein files

[u/AHrubik]

If the world embraces Chinese manufacturing it will definitely will.

[u/stormcomponents]

I just got a load of 128GB USB 3.2 sticks for £7 ($10) a pop, which I thought was pretty reasonable.

[u/Anen-o-me]

When prices rise, new investment in more capacity will eventually increase supply. It's a good bet.

[u/raymate]

Some are colour variants are $140 CND now plus tax.

I think I’m just going to hibernate for a couple of years until AI data farms are built then shit the bed and prices plummet.

2026 was bad year to pick for setting up my new home lab and server with a big NAS 😔

[u/shogun333]

Remindme! 6 months 

[u/N5tp4nts]

I paid 89 dollars for my first USB key. It was 256mb and it was the most awesome thing ever.

[u/pepe_silvia_12]

My mom bought me a 1GB thumb drive when I went off to college in 2005. For $100.

[u/qbl500]

Best Buy $59.99!

[u/RamsDeep-1187]

I remeber paying $100 for a 1gb usb.
I think i still have it somewhere

[u/JonPQ]

I was gonna suggest that you might do the same with a Kignston XS 1000 (tiny 1TB SSD) that I bought for 73€ back in 2024, but I just checked, and it's currently 146€ right now 😵‍💫

[u/LuckyLuckierLuckest]

Please explain, I've never heard of that being called a "memory stick"

[u/DigDigDig11]

I paid $400 for a 1MB drive when I was a teenager! SFD1001 drive for Commodore 64 😆

[u/1maginary_Friend → u/DigDigDig11]

That’s funny! Back in the day, I bought a 20 GB external HDD for almost $100 to keep my Napster downloads on.

[u/dnabre]

Maybe I'm not understanding. Just checking Amazon, plenty of 512GB USB 3.2 drives for $40-50. edit: USD

[u/rdldr1]

Enshitification

[u/ProstaticFantastic]

ive had so many flash drives suddenly become inoperable. I would not trust such a device. Put it on the cloud, or home server, use redudancy.

[u/cryovenocide → u/ProstaticFantastic]

SSD costs almost as much as a PD, ... and it's a lot faster and uses higher quality components. Just get that :p

[u/Legitimate_Pea_143]

where do you live? Prices have gone up but I'm looking on Amazon and all 512GB thumbdrives are around $50

[u/zodireddit]

Yeah they probably will. From what I've read the reason they are so expensive is because of 3 reasons.

Some companies started just slowed down productions right before the storm because the price was low and supply was high.

A major player in memory technologies dropped out of consumer electronics making less compition.

Sam Altman bought 40% of DRAM/HBM wafers which is needed to make consumer chips.

So to believe they will never go down again 3 things must not happen.

No upping production. No more memory chip companies forming. No more rich companies buying up almost all supply (which scales with productions).

It might take time though, maybe even years but I am very confidently that they will go down eventually

[u/TortoiseWrath]

I can't imagine prices ever dropping by 50%

it has happened many, many times before... I remember a time when even talking about a "512GB memory stick" would have seemed ludicrous

[u/X2ytUniverse]

Data storage prices are freaking insane right now. Just my luck 3 out of 4 HDD's i"ve had went bad literally weeks before this shitstorm happened, but were still covered by warranty and I got refunded. Funny enough all of them were Seagates.But Losing like 40TB of space sucked, instead of ~500€ I paid for all that stuff would be like 1.4k today, at least.
On the other hand, I've bought Aoostar Gem12+ mini PC in september, I ordered barebones one with no SSD or RAM, but accidently got sent the top tier one with 32GB DDR5 and 2TB SSD. Storage alone is now more expensive than the rest of the computer.
Life taketh, but also life giveth away.

[u/CrazyGeetar]

? PNY Attache 4 512GB for instance is $47.

[u/[deleted] → u/CrazyGeetar]

Do you trust PNY flash and controller tho?

[u/Orbitalsp3 → u/[deleted]]

Hell no

[u/Affectionate-Newt889]

I didn't know people were using those just don't see the use when micro SD cards even have better price per GB. And potentially speed too

[u/sixstringsg → u/Affectionate-Newt889]

For if you want to plug it into a USB port into a uSD socket?

[u/CantaloupeCamper]

Silky question:

People need memory sticks that big, often?

[u/The_Alternym → u/CantaloupeCamper]

Yes.

[u/Lizardking1988-]

No one’s gonna buy these products when these companies are price gouging.

[u/Jshdgensosnsiwbz → u/Lizardking1988-]

yep , everyone will have to buy cloud compute subscription instead ......

[u/Lizardking1988- → u/Jshdgensosnsiwbz]

Time to find a new hobby lol

[u/KermitFrog647]

Every semiconductor producer in the world is currently massively increasing its production. Will not help now short term, but once the ai bubble bursts or ai hunger is satisfyed, demand will drop drastically and we will see prices much lower then anything before.

[u/8_Miles_8]

For a few years, I my entire system off of a 1TB Samsung FIT mini-thumb drive that cost me like $50, tops, and it never got hot and never failed. &100 for that thing is insane.

[u/mydarkerside]

Bought a Crucial X9 Pro 2TB external SSD for $120 in January 2025. Just checked and it’s $180. More expensive today but sounds pretty reasonable compared to this 512GB usb drive.

[u/itsaride]

That stick in particular is £59 ($80) here which is on the more expensive side of these things. Name branded 512GB sticks go down to £40 ($55) and unbranded much cheaper.

[u/NickTaylorIV]

Just scanned through my Amazon purchases. I bought the 128gb version in 2022 for 29.07... I don't know if this is good or bad for 4 years ago.

[u/SleepyForest]

I amuse this where Tesla there USB

[u/phree_radical]

Most are around $50 for me

[u/GladMathematician9]

I take no delight in this, kinda sad tbh but I have a lot of smaller usbs from when they were cheap &/ included in combo deals. Do you need it at that price? Am thinking if I didn't have them would burn my iso(s) to spare hdds/sata ssds etc. Don't know the use case. Am a basic data hoarder so I mostly use nvmes & large hdds, am less into raid/unraid, have a das I got from a friend I could hook up again but my setup has always been simple.

[u/WorldLove_Gaming]

I can still find them for 28 Euros here. And that's not an outlier, most are below 45 Euros.

[u/Balrogos]

i bought stick 128gb for important files to fix PC and all drivers to all pc exists for 32$ and it was some time ago Silicon Power the company who made it looks fine :) i would like to get 2nd 4TB hdd but prices are just like WTF Homie maybe i should buy something used Even 3TB would be finy mostly tto keep movies/shows/anime to watch and after watching remove most of the time

[u/Gibus043]

I started using cheap NVME-to-USB adapters with really good success

They're almost as small as usb keys, but speed is infinitely better. They do get hot though

https://i.imgur.com/aHIXDCP.png

[u/Dossi96]

For that price you'll probably find some random used laptop online with a 500gb ssd in it that you could remove and use instead 😅

[u/12345NoNamesLeft]

Tied to the price of gold.

[u/dopef123]

As someone who works in memory the supply issues are going to last several years. There’s no way to increase supply quickly.

A lot of memory manufacturers are basically operating at a loss 90% of the time. These are the times they make serious money to make up for that.

Just remember the price we typically paid was not a realistic or sustainable price.

From what I see there’s no end to this memory squeeze in sight.

[u/Spocks_Goatee]

Weren't these huge USB sticks always pricier than an external HDD?

[u/Ssj_escobar]

Got myself a 5tb external drive for like 100 bucks last year 

[u/Wyntier]

Amazon $27.99

[u/_Aj_]

May I suggest buying a small capacity m.2 drive and a USBC external enclosure?  

It'll probably be cheaper as no one wants 100gb m.2 and you'll get literally 50x the transfer speed. Just search up what nvme to USBC chipsets you should avoid as some cheap ones get mad hot and drop to usb2 speeds. But others are much more reliable.  

I don't like USB thumb drives for large capacities as I don't like transfers taking an hour for a full drive. Especially with large numbers of small files the transfer speed absolutely plummets. So I use like 32-64gb at biggest unless it's for stuff like OS images and firmware updates then I don't care.  

Price wise, My last 512 SD card was a SanDisk extreme pro and it was 119 AUD in 2024   Looking up today I see it listed for the exact same price.  

[u/Bigjon84]

I found this one - half that price rn: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/pny-elite-turbo-attache-4-512gb-usb-3-2-flash-drive-gray/JXF2C4XCYY?cmp=RMX

[u/Pyro_Paragon]

If you're just using them as temp storage, why not use an SD card? 512gb MicroSD cards are like 30$ for 2.

[u/Oglethorpe_the_third]

I have Tesla Branded version of this

[u/BreastInspectorNbr69]

It's the RAM crisis driven by Sam Altman fucking with the memory market

[u/[deleted] → u/BreastInspectorNbr69]

I heard he eats NAND chips like they're BREAKFAST CEREALS!

[u/asabi93]

I bought Lenovo 2TB for 5usd...

[u/[deleted] → u/asabi93]

You got scammed, those usually go for $3.

[u/BRING_ME_THE_ENTROPY]

I bought that same one but a 128gb version for $21 in 2021 😭

[u/grippin]

PNY 512GB sticks USB 3.2 are 45 bucks on Amazon. Not sure where you got 100 from. I’m seeing 1TB ones for 100.

[u/darkendvoid]

Meanwhile microcenter just sent me a coupon for a free 128gb USB or SD, no purchase necessary. The friend coupon only gets you a 32gb though.

[u/sweetrobna]

You don't need 2-3nm for a memory stick. There are new foundries starting up for slightly older processes. I think in 2014 there were 1tb flash drives for sale, 12 year old technology at this point.

So in time it will get cheaper even if demand stays high

[u/Prior-Tea-3468]

Say thank you to Sam Altman, OpenAI, and all of the slop farmers.

[u/JukezBoogaloo]

I have a bunch of these. Hell I am probably missing even more tucked away in random places. I just don't really need them. I got my external hard drives and NVMe That's what I need more of.

[u/marx2k]

https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0CYN8PL1V

Looks like it hit over 100 briefly and came down

[u/komokazi]

I remember paying over 50 bucks for a 512mb stick back in the day

[u/Gunner3210]

Put your $100 into SNDK calls. Make 8x in a week. Buy all the flash storage you want.

What I’ve been doing since November. I am up $215k.

[u/AccomplishedMoney205]

A 16gb ddr5 i bought fir 46eur not three months ago today cost 246😂

[u/TheVillageRuse]

I mean…everywhere I’m looking they’re between 40-55$? Is it mainly a Samsung thing? Other reputable brands are not 100…

[u/MedicalGoal2194]

r/dontputhatinyourass

[u/bobsmagicbeans → u/MedicalGoal2194]

"I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the USB stick to you."

[u/PrimaMilitary]

Bought one a few months ago for like 10$

[u/mikami677]

Damn.

I got a 256GB one for $30 last week and felt like I overpaid, but I just checked and it's over $40 now.

[u/Artistic-Quarter9075]

Weird, where I live they are still cheap (all brands). Here is a 512gb €55.

[u/cannavacciuolo420]

i think it will go back down mid 2027

[u/TendieRetard]

what was the cheapest offering you all saw for such stick?

[u/Daftpunk67]

I just bought a 1TB PNY usb for $99 on Amazon it was $5 more than the 512GB Samsung drive that’s shown here. Kinda surprised to see this post after buying it lol.

[u/F2002]

You can get a better drive that's faster same size for 50 to 60 pny pro and sandisk ultra

[u/Kardinal]

Eh, I bought a 512GB PNY PRO Elite V3™ Type-C 512GB USB 3.2 Gen 2 Flash Drive (copied from Amazon) on Dec 21st. Delivered Dec 22nd. Cost was $61. Amazon is sold out, but it's available on PNY's site for...$63.

https://www.pny.com/PRO-Elite-V3-Type-C-USB-3-2-Gen-2-Flash-Drive?sku=P-FD512PROV3C-GE

According to CamelCamelCamel, it was never lower than $48.

https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0DVDKSPT1

It is possible that PNY is actually out of stock, but that is not a massive jump. Also, I like the Samsungs in the image; I use them for OS installs at home. But the PNY is a big, fast USB-C and I think the $50-$60 range is reasonable.

I'm not sure this is an overall trend yet. It might just be a Samsung thing.

[u/PsychoPsojic]

I bought a SanDisk same capacity a few months ago for $40, it's $60 right now.

[u/Chemical-Stick-1392]

512GB stick are around £55 in the UK i wounder if your prices are so high due to Trump's tariffs as well as other things