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Wait, you actually thought he meant going to Wal-Mart and buying 1GB flash drives?

Somehow I doubt that is what the poster meant and you are just building a straw-man argument to gain points.

Insulating, heating and protecting against shock should not be harder for a flash drive than insulating, heating and protecting against impact of a tape drive with lot of moving parts inside.

More practically, I suspect the problem is the amount of time and energy taken to prove and certify a new way of doing things. Flight data recorders are standardised across most of the world and I suspect agreeing and certifing the number/location/design is more difficult than actually changing the hardware.

I believe the cost of installing reliable data drives will be significantly minuscule compared to the actual price of the aircraft and their inherent value of holding extremely valuable data.

Or being submerged for days in salt water.