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Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware
Technology
Mark Tyson

Researcher builds bizarre 128-byte USB drive the size of a dinner plate using ancient pre-semiconductor magnetic core memory technology — data disappears once it is read, requiring special handling

Big, old tech, 128byte USB flash drive uses magnetic core memory technology.

A computing enthusiast has assembled one of the most bizarre USB drives we have ever seen. Despite being the size of a dinner plate, this drive holds just 128 bytes of data. The incredibly poor data density is largely due to the use of the archaic Magnetic Core Memory technology, which predates integrated circuits. Moreover, data saved to this drive is non-volatile (good), but bits are erased during the read process (bad). Despite the drawbacks and impractical nature of this device, created by space science researcher @dyd_Nao on X (machine translation), we applaud the effort.

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