Customer Ratings & Reviews

Bought it on sale, haven't used it yet. Super easy to close to prevent damage

Way faster to download and upload price mmm could be a little cheaper but it works great

It does what it is required for a flash drive to do.

Works as expected. Easy to work with. Made it easy to move data between computers

Works fine. Easy curb-side pick up. Bought for Grandfather.

Very good but pricey, but what can you say about a USB

Very high probability that I drew the short straw, however mine was dead out of the box. Tried it on multiple computers and operating systems, tested the USB ports, nothing could be done to get any machine to recognize it. We will be exchanging for something different

Tried using this for storing VM's and launching them...was much slower than the SanDisk USB SSD's that are available from Best Buy (and at a very good price, actually). And so I went with SanDisk, even though it is more expensive than these PNY sticks, sustained speed (vs. burst speed) is important for my particular application.

WE had an old thumb drive and got this model and it is faster and has 100 times the story at a great price. Thanks Best Buy

Had it 3wks and it reads damaged unrepairable now!

I'm putting this review up here to offer some balance -- I find it strange that every review (17 so far) is a 4 or 5. Rather than spout off about the various shortcomings of this product (I've owned 4 over the past 3 years, so I have a pretty good idea of what's good and bad), I thought I'd simply offer some usage tips: 1. Any 512 GB flash drive, in general, is unstable and unpredictable. That's absolutely true with PNY's Elite Pro: It will write 50 GB of data in a few seconds one day, then take a few minutes on the same exact files on the next, then function somewhere in between those times on day 3. 2. The metal casing is stylish and durable. However, it also gets extremely hot -- to the point where it can actually burn your skin if you're not careful. Expect to warm your fingers after about 5 minutes of use. On the other hand, it cools off extremely fast as well, so intermittent use is probably the way to go if possible. 3. That excessive heat leads to a short drive life. Each of my units has lasted about a year before dying abruptly -- and I mean abruptly, as in: Works fine at 8 a.m. Loses half of its data at 11 a.m. Unable to open or be recognized by 1 p.m. Compare this to one of PNY's 256 GB Elite Pros, which is going on its 4th year carrying a similar amount of data. [For reference: I copy and delete data and image files from these drives on a daily basis -- usually moving about 100 GB back and forth.] 4. This unit has some durability when it comes to stupidity. One of them survived going through the washer and dryer on two different occasions when I forgot it was in one of my pockets. I'm not suggesting you try this at home, but at least you know all is not lost (in terms of data) if you are a bit careless. 5. PNY advertises this unit as having a read speed of up to 400MB/sec. No argument there; reading/copying the data (of any type) wasn't the problem. It's slower when copying to another external drive (I haven't clocked it, but expect it to take up to 3 times as long). 6. Data writing is another matter. It's lightning fast at first -- roughly the first 1-2 months -- probably close to the 250MB/sec max advertised. But then it drops to about half that speed for the rest of its life. Reformatting the drive doesn't help. My guess is that the excessive problem mentioned earlier does minor damage to the circuitry after a few weeks. 7. Don't plan on using all 512 GB of this storage space [which is really around 500 thanks to all the system data] -- at least, not on a regular basis. I did that with two of my four drives and shortened their lifespans significantly. Keep it to about half -- roughly 200-300GB -- and you'll function for a while. If you plan to use it for one-time storage, things should be fine. 8. This comes pre-formatted in NTFS. Reformat it to exFAT for better operation if you're going to work with large images. You can also reformat it for use with a Mac, although I'm not familiar with the options available. Given these findings, I'd only recommend this product for occasional, light-capacity use. You can use it to store massive amounts of data, but only if you copy it gradually to prevent overheating. It's worth its price tag now that it's come down to around $100. But if you can, stick with the more-stable 256 models. [A footnote: I've also tried Patriot's 512 GB Supersonic Rage 2. It suffers from slower-than-expected read and write times right out of the box, which was the reason I returned it after a week.]

This is the second one of these I've purchased. It allows me to back up my entire laptop and carry it around my neck on a lanyard.

It did the job to hold files from 2 laptops. It was a bit pricey. But I needed to get this done - so it worked.

Easy to use for this computer illiterate person. Simple and basic and does almost everything for you.

Not sure yet. It is a Christmas present and has not been used yet.

Used this in the USB slot of my blu-ray player to keep video files. Loaded up fine, used a few times, then took it back to the PC to change a few files around, and it was "suddenly" corrupted. Would not allow formatting as it was also "suddenly" write-protected in a way that conveniently can't be undone. So basically it's a $100 brick that must be thrown away. This is the first time I've ever bought anything other than a Sandisk. Clearly a mistake, and one I won't be repeating. As I said, garbage.