BUSlink's 64GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive PRO 2 Series

We're not exactly sure when BUSlink launched a 64GB -- that's gigabyte, yes -- flash drive, but it's right there on their site, plain as day, handily and smugly smacking down even the largest of flash drives, available for purchase for $5,000. Apparently they've also got a 32GB (not shown) and 16GB drive for $1,500, but seriously, if this isn't some kind of sick joke catering to our obsession with solid state memory, you know exactly which one it is we'll be promptly devouring as soon as we can sell off enough excess gear and internal organs to afford it. You can run an OS off a flash drive, right? Ok, good.

[Thanks, Andrew]

[manny @ Mar 29th 2006 9:14AM]

WOW!! I wonder how fast XP would boot and run off this disk.

[manny @ Mar 29th 2006 9:17AM]

SPEED (max) Read: 20MBps Write: 15MBps

[Lord Burko @ Mar 29th 2006 9:18AM]

How is this possible.... when will it be $89.95 with a $40 mail-in so I can pick one up?

[MarkF @ Mar 29th 2006 9:22AM]

It must be April 1st somewhere.

[spencer hudson @ Mar 29th 2006 9:29AM]

one days dream, is another days reality

roll on 1tb flash stick

[thud @ Mar 29th 2006 9:30AM]

Well, I have the "measly" 4GB Buslink drive, and I can tell you - it works fine, seems pretty fast, BUT - and for a flash drive, this is a big one (for me at least) - this thing is as big as a house. The picture does not do justice to how tremendously large this drive is. I guess you could theoretically use it on a keyring as pictured, but it's not going to slip unobtrusively into your pocket like a sandisk Cruzer Micro or whatever. For 64GB I could probably overlook it though, if it were cheaper.

[jfox @ Mar 29th 2006 9:35AM]

how much do you think this will cost in 1 year? Im guessing... about $150.00. So get yours NOW, while depreciation is at a MAXIMUM.

[Lennie Medlin @ Mar 29th 2006 9:44AM]

This is exactly why people are so pissed about paying $100 plus dollars for a 1 gig Sony PSP memory chip. If you can cram 64 Gigs into a freakin key chain why can't you fit a few gigs into a PSP? I hope Microsoft puts a 100 Gigs into their new portable gaming system just to prove a point. Screw you Sony! Stop messin' with us and use the technology now and not later just because you can!!!

[Anne Onymoose @ Mar 29th 2006 9:47AM]

April Fool!

[Tareq Ashry @ Mar 29th 2006 9:57AM]

I bet they will have to make a USB3, which is faster than USB2.

[aws910 @ Mar 29th 2006 10:14AM]

I've looked into booting an OS off of flash/USB memory and it doesn't look promising when you see that hard disks are still faster than flash. Look at tomshardware.com. Transfer rates are still way higher, and as long as the HD is properly defragged, the seek-time issue should have minimal impact on performance. And it would be cool to run everything off of solid state storage, but even flash drives "go bad" after a certain amount of reads/writes - an OS is very read/write intensive. Therefore, I don't think that (under current technology) solid-state media gives any advantages over hard drives. Skip this, get a second hard drive, run raid, get a ton of memory, and wait for better solid-state storage to come out.

[BSTalker @ Mar 29th 2006 10:30AM]

Hopefully heres where the flux fun begins

aws910: I've yet to see an external lab test one but this drive seems fast enough for me :)

http://www.dpie.com/storage/sa2580.html

[Poopmaster @ Mar 29th 2006 11:30AM]

That's the thing about flash drives -- when the Read/Write cycles are used up, the drive no longer works. Maybe you'll get lucky and get errors and corruption before it fails altogether, or maybe it just freezes. There goes your OS! Of course, those using it for occasional booting and troubleshooting could be hit too, especially if they use flash drives as part of their toolkit. (Support: "Let me just boot Red Hat off this flash drive for you...er...oops.") If anyone could come up with way to indicate on the exterior of the drive how many R/W cycles are left, that would rock. At least you'd know how much danger you were in.

[Hum @ Mar 29th 2006 11:42AM]

hum, seems like the flashthing is more expenive than the car the key is from

[havanahjoe @ Mar 29th 2006 12:48PM]

LOL Hum. I was about to post the same thing.

[Brian @ Mar 29th 2006 12:59PM]

of course what they're not telling you is that the key in the picture measures 4 feet long.....

[Spin @ Mar 29th 2006 1:03PM]

It has to be an early April Fools Day joke...right?

[Hannah @ Mar 29th 2006 1:04PM]

maybe they meant to put 6.4gig and put 64 instead? One horrible typo!?

[grawity @ Mar 29th 2006 1:19PM]

Cool!

[u3b3rg33k @ Mar 29th 2006 1:22PM]

maybe they should stripe the flash chips to up the read/write rates

[Junior @ Mar 29th 2006 1:31PM]

Meh, doesn't sound like an April Fools joke to me. I've been watching these things on Ebay for the past 6 months or so, and the maximum memory has been doubling every month or so. I wouldn't think about buying one yet though, as the price usually drops to ~$500 once the newest size comes out.

[Adil Osman @ Mar 29th 2006 1:35PM]

I've actually called them up and it appears this is not an April fools joke although it appears that the drive itself is quite large .. around the length of your palm.

[Mr. Bill @ Mar 29th 2006 1:41PM]

So is the attached key to be used to shut down the higher functions of your computer when it wigs out and starts killing the other astronauts on your ship?

[seb @ Mar 29th 2006 1:45PM]

april fools. if you look at the large picture versus the smaller picture on the buslink website, the light/shadow of the "PRO2" text has the typical photoshop effect of scaling down a large PSD to small size, then saving it as JPEG (or equiv): in the smaller version, the lights and shadows become blurred, and undefined, because the text got smaller, but the bevel settings didn't change to compensate for the smaller text. also, the text doesn't match the contour of the drive itself.

next time do a better photoshop :

[John @ Mar 29th 2006 1:46PM]

Do you also the Kia that key goes to?

[whitetrash @ Mar 29th 2006 1:51PM]

you don't think a 64G flash drive is a little more porftable than a whole harddrive and much faster to plug in and out too, i'd say that was a pretty big advatange over harddrives, aws910

[cuby @ Mar 29th 2006 1:57PM]

well, i just ordered one and got to the very last step. unless they yell "surprise" at the absolute last second, it seems this is real.

[Son Nguyen @ Mar 29th 2006 2:33PM]

Wow, that's a nice stick to have. But 3-5 years from now, I imagine we all look at 64Gb USB stick like the 128Mb ones right now. Technology = Pushing the current boundary

[nick @ Mar 29th 2006 3:01PM]

Someone buy one and see if it's real or not. If it's real, you'll have a 64GB flash drive you can show off, if it's fake, you can sue them for false advertising and then go out and buy 64 1GB flash drives to show off.

[steve mccallister @ Mar 29th 2006 3:36PM]

But it is left-in-the-pants-pocket-and-run-through-the-washer compatible?

[[noodle] @ Mar 29th 2006 4:11PM]

wow tax is ONLY $412.50
i might as well buy 2 of them.

[Denzel McGraw @ Mar 29th 2006 4:48PM]

WOW with capability of 64GB I can start dreaming on USB key as laptop.
Last week I read about new technology and I cannot wait until they publish there product.
If all they say is true, this is going to be a winner
URL: http://www.apponkey.com

[Martin K. @ Mar 29th 2006 6:34PM]

Okay... so where's my 10GB solid state MP3 player??? Enough with the single digits!

[Deejay Knight @ Mar 29th 2006 6:39PM]

[quote]If all they say is true, this is going to be a winner
URL: http://www.apponkey.com[/quote]

Why use them when you can use the free open source Portable Apps? http://www.portableapps.com

[Matt @ Mar 29th 2006 7:31PM]

"**Disclaimer - Actual storage space that you will enjoy may differ as indicated."
So, maybe I'll enjoy half, and the other half will piss me off? ;)
Anyway, the mention a 32 GB drive, but they don't have a link to it. No way I'd ever get one of those though. For the price, just buy an external hard drive. Sure, it's bigger, but if you need THAT much storage, does it matter?

[Daniel Spisak @ Mar 29th 2006 7:46PM]

Never buy from BUSlink....only bad things can come of it.

[Larry D @ Mar 29th 2006 9:41PM]

I don't think a key chain should cost more than the car the key belongs to.

[Brian B @ Mar 29th 2006 11:21PM]

For all you OS jump-drive crazed people, you do have the option of using a read only OS to help preserve the memory stick. There's a Barts pre-installation environment, and I believe microsoft makes one as well, both of which can be burned to a bootable CD (and therefore could be put on a memory stick as a read only system). If you're interested in Linux that OS can also be configured to run as read only. You could probably put the Knoppix linux distribution on the keychain without too much re-configuration.

[Spandan @ Mar 30th 2006 12:53AM]

hey
u know what?!
ok... this is the website right?
http://www.buslinkbuy.com/p_cat1.asp?catID=205
now, on the USB, it says it is 64 GB
but then, its description says that is the 1st 8GB flash drive in the world
so, i think there is some problem...
still though, 8GB is pretty good...
SM

[J.I.G. @ Mar 30th 2006 1:41AM]

hey
u know what?!
ok... this is the website right?
http://www.buslinkbuy.com/p_cat1.asp?catID=205
now, on the USB, it says it is 64 GB
but then, its description says that is the 1st 8GB flash drive in the world
so, i think there is some problem...

*sigh* Maybe if you read the next paragraph...
"BUSLink was first to introduce the 8GB and 16GB flash drive to the world, now we're proud to introduce the first 32GB and 64GB flash drive ever."

[Matt Chalmers @ Mar 30th 2006 5:45AM]

Hey, it's been removed from the Buslink website now...

Dammit, and I was just about to buy a couple for easter presents as well...

[watz @ Mar 30th 2006 5:56AM]

I guess they market it as a 64GB usb-stick(Gbit that is) which is equal to 8Gbyte... :)

[spatz @ Mar 30th 2006 5:12PM]

You can get a 250GB USB2 external drive for GBP 80 and it is almost as fast as my hard drive. It is definitely faster than my 2GB Easy Disk. When this size and upwards becomes the norm, we should see the ultimate solid-state MP3 players. If they've got FM radios and record capabilities, we would be able to leave one recording for about 6 months, while we go on safari. Then you could use Goldwave or something to analyse the 6-month long WAV file, and listen in when it's noisy, to hear what's been happening while you were gone. The ultimate bug!

[Laurence @ Mar 30th 2006 6:01PM]

Just buy a bigger hard drive or an external hard drive. These guy are probably dual channel flash and their still going to have slower read/write speeds. What the heck are you going to spend 5000 bucks on flash memory when the good old hard drive will do just as well for much less!

[Gazuz @ Apr 1st 2006 12:45AM]

Well I know some people in the Flash business, this is just a prototype that they sell.. Really you can cram in over a 100GB but the prices would be insane... The size shouldn't change but it'll be too slow to transfer 64GB rendering it useless... They should work on a firewise flash drive.. it'll be expensive but it'll be as effective as a harddrive..

Just letting u guys know its not as big as a house, its as big as any other drive, thats why they all look the same (the design might be different though)

[Gavin @ Apr 1st 2006 1:43AM]

No one has mentioned the issue with a USB power supply. USB 2 simply cannot supply enough power to keep this puppy going - does it have it's own power adaptor?!?

"Worlds largest" was just 16Gb a couple of weeks ago.

It's hype, it's fake and it's just not possible

BUS who?

[Karl @ Apr 5th 2006 6:28AM]

The page has dissapeared, I'm getting the feeling that it was a hoax. Largest on the site is now 16 GB.

[Jason Black @ Apr 12th 2006 1:20PM]

better

http://www.kanguru.com/flashdrive_max.html

[Irfan Khan @ Jun 26th 2006 11:19AM]

Hi everyone,
for another cool Reader/Writer USB flash drive and other memory cards product check this site out.
http://www.nerdrack.com