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If you're looking to carry a lot of data on a little storage device, there's some exciting news about Samsung thumb drives. Today, the company announced the new versions of its USB flash portable storage, the BAR Plus, and FIT Plus, with 512GB in capacity, or double the previous version's top capacity, while remaining the same physically.
Update: All new thumb drives mentioned here are available for purchase on August 6, 2024.
Samsung Thumb Drives: Tiny but fast
Samsung says the two new drives share the same 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) standardโthey are backward compatible with USB 2.0โand can deliver sustained copy performance of up to 400MB/s and 110MB/s for reading and writing, respectively, which are crazy fast for flash-based storage. Still, at this speed, you'll need over an hour to fill up 512GB.
The two drives use the regular USB-A port. The FIT Plus is so tiny that once plugged in, it almost becomes part of the host computer. It comes in gray. The BAR Plus has a more traditional "thumb" design and is available in Titan Grey or Champagne Silver color options. (In case you don't know, the 128GB BAR Plus is the drive provided by Testla for most of its cars as the default storage for its Sentry and Dashcam feature. )
Both have a metal body and are rugged enough to handle almost any environment. Samsung says they are backed by its five-year warranty and "five-proof protection." Specifically, they can withstand water, temperatures, X-rays, drops, and magnetic impact.
If you have a computer with a USB-C port, the Samsung USB Type-C Flash Drive is a better fit. It two also doubled the capacity to 512GB. Unfortunately, so far, Samsung has no flexible option to handle both USB-C and USB-A ports. So, if you have to move between these two ports, an adapter is necessary.
Availability and pricing
Samsung says the two new 512GB BAR Plus and FIT Plus flash drives start shipping today from Samsung at a suggested price of $79.99 each and will be available at your favorite stores soon.
If you're looking for a USB-C flash drive of the same capacity, the company says the 512GB version of the USB Type-C 512GB flash drive will arrive soon.
Update: All three drives are now available at retail stores.
My devices increasingly have no usb-a port. Did they already have equivalent drives for usb-c?
Read the post in full, Tom.
Sorry, I missed the last section. Perhaps over scrolled as ads were loading.
No worries. I added a photo to make the matter clear, in your honor. ๐
While this is quite good information, i wonder what took them so long to double the capacity of these devices. I bought the FIT (256GB) a few years back (or should i say – enons in history back…) and coupled it with an internal mpcie/usb adapter inside my (ancient) Thinkpad X61 as a means to gains some extra, booteable storage.
I’m not slamming them for bringing this evolution to the table now (because, bigger is always better) but i’m questioning why it took them so long (relatively speaking) to make it.
I hear you, Daniel. However, considering the tiny physical size, it’s very hard to increase the flash density while maintaining the performance. I’d say it’s quite impressive.
It sure is. Agree with you fully. I’m just reflecting on the fact that 256GB storage has been around for quite some time now (in this tiny USB format) whereas we recently have seen 1.5 or even 4TB units in SD form factor (which should corrlelate to bringing the same size of storage to USB via SD and most probably micro-sd – but i’m only guessing here…)
What we have is surely quite impressive. But if one can dream… ๐
I’m not complaining here, i’m merely guessing where we will end up next hopefully.
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