IDK man, I bought a 10 pack of cheap thumb drives on Amazon a year ago, just big enough for giving to friends full of files or installing Linux or whatever. They were microcenter brand.. Not high quality. The other day I used the last two, took them to work. Went to buy another pack? More than double the price I paid last week. Yeah yeah it's flash, not HDDs. I don't think it matters. Everyone is riding the "computer get more expensive" train. And once the price goes up, it doesn't come back down. We're boned.