Are 1TB Flash Drives Out In The Real World?

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Listener Sharon in Kansas City, Missouri listens to the Podcast is hungry for storage:

I wondered if you know if there will ever be a 1TB thumb drive. Someone told me that they are out there, but I don’t know.

You can already buy 1TB thumb drives, the problem is not availability, it’s price. Kingston introduced its first 1TB flash drive at CES 2013.
If you come by the showpage, we’ll link you to a Kingston 1TB thumb drive in case you really need one. Having said that… it will cost you $850, so you could technically buy an entire laptop with a 1TB hard drive to store your files in instead, it’s not a cheap little drive.

Beware the inexpensive 1TB USB 2.0 flash drives that you see advertised. Those drives are smaller capacity drives with hacked controllers that show a high capacity but can’t deliver it. They are a complete, straight up rip-off. One “HP” drive for sale on eBay is priced at just $60, but oddly enough HP doesn’t think they make a 1TB flash drive (protip: that’s because they don’t.)

Fact is, 1TB flash drives that work require special controllers and super high density memory chips. Even at that, they’re big and bulky for flash drives. You would likely be much better off looking at a 1TB USB 3.0 7200RPM external hard drive. Be sure to get the 7200RPM, though, as you want decent performance.