I checked the other reviews, and getting somewhat varying lists of capacities.  The highest being 470 GB.  I remember actually seeing these reviews before in the past, but I forgot about them.  I may try the USB 3.1 512 GB PNY that had slower maximum read and write speeds the next time I get another capacity greater than 256 GB.  To see if it actually is 512 GB or not.


This model:

https://www.amazon.com/PNY-P-FD512ELX-GE-Elite-X-512GB-Speeds/dp/B07FLXYK4F/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1545268850&sr=8-1&keywords=pny+512+gb+usb+3.1

So capacities are inconsistent? That’s....worse. That makes it sound like PNY is just putting 512GB worth of flash memory into these units, disabling whatever amount fails QC (or counting on the controller to do so), and figuring users won’t mind as long as the usable capacity is close.

Actually, turns out this thing is probably trash.  After writing over 300 GB to it, got constant BSOD's attempting to write files to it.  Every time, the BSOD error code was different.  I thought it might be related to CBT from the latest update of Reflect, but even after uninstalling CBT and restarting, got BSOD's every time a few files were written to this flash drive.  I'm sending this back and trying the 3.1 drive instead.


EDIT: Had better luck formatting this flash drive as an exFAT, the default format under Windows 10.  I lost the ability to boot Reflect from it, but, at least, I stopped getting BSOD's every time I tried writing to the flash drive after reaching X capacity written.  With that in mind, can I recommend this flash drive?  Probably not, really.  One shouldn't have to format a flash drive just to get it to work properly.  And who's to say I just didn't randomly get by with no BSOD's attempting to write to it again during the rest of the last few writes?  It could be lurking to bite me later on down the road. 


As for not being able to boot Reflect from it, I mean, maybe there's a way to get DISKPART to get it to do that and still keep the full format capacity available.  I just don't know what it is.


I will try the USB 3.1 PNY next time and see how well that goes.


EDIT 2: Yeah, this flash drive is unreliable trash.  I copied over a lot of Reflect image files to it.  One of the manual Verifies I performed failed on a file part.  I copied over the data offset failure file and tried again and the Verify completed.  I came across another one where this happened.  I copied over the bad file again and tried again.  It failed again on the same file part.  I Verified the file from the source drive and it is not corrupt.  So, this drive is just plain terrible at writes and is just trash.  Goeth back it to Amazon.com.

I wouldn't try the USB 3.1 model either.  Just read the reviews on Amazon.com and one of them said it, too, was only 460 GB for a supposed 512 GB flash drive.  So, I won't be trying that one myself either.  I'll get my money back on this flash drive and invest that in a 512 GB USB SSD.

Resurrecting an over 2 year old thread with this follow up.  I found a different kind of PNY "512 GB" USB 3.0 flash drive at my local Office Depot on sale, so I decided to give it a whirl.  This one doesn't seem to be trash.  So, if you're looking for a 512 GB flash drive that does seem to work, you could try this one:

https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/7247502/PNY-USB-30-Flash-Drive-512GB/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=trigger-price-drop&utm_term=pdn_none_consumer_na_retail%20only_na_na&utm_content=2021_28_sun_na_482208_View_Price&mi_u=4c00060e679abd6d8a99f5b88c0c76568c7c310b&mi_ecmp=PriceDrop_Notification_202128&et_rid=23181303&dtm_em=0a8f1c20b6e4233a304490147769f700&em=F3uGWQyHdnMzEkQ5sw%2B0do7Pf1BRqLIb


There are 3 things to note about it:

1.) the drive comes with 512 MB of unallocated space at the start of geometry, before the first partition.  So, either resize the existing partition or just delete it and create an all new one to get the maximum space available

2.) PNY appears to be playing fast and loose again with the definition of "512 GB."  File Explorer returns 462 GB with an actual capacity of 496,283,090,944 bytes.

3.) There appears to be a significant drop in write speed once you deplete the cache.  While this is to be expected, it seems to be much more defined on this device.  Once you max out the cache, you get bursts of speed going from about 126 MB/s max, for a few seconds, to a gradually declining 5 MB/s, for a few seconds, before cycling through again.