Let’s talk: Fake 1TB (or larger) USB Flash drives being sold on Amazon and other online retailers.

[+Warwagon MVC]

On Amazon or other online retailers, you will find 1TB USB Flash drives costing only $15-$40. They are fake! Be wary of them!

 

Scammers take normal 32GB /128GB (or less) flash drives (or a Micro SD card reader with a Micro SD Card) and change the code on them to report their total storage as 1TB when someone plugs the flash drive into their computer.

 

Once the user fills up the flash drive to the flash drive’s original capacity, files will start to become corrupted as the computer attempts to add more by rewriting data already stored on the drive. The contents of the flash drive will appear to still be there, but a lot of it will be corrupted and will no longer open.

 

So, if you own a 1TB (or higher) flash drive that you got off Amazon and paid under $50, it’s probably fake and you should stop using it before it’s too late.

 

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Amazon in a lot of ways has become a far worse version of Ebay when it comes to marketplace sellers. Amazon will pretty much let anyone sell on the back of most existing products there these days, with the fake products often undercutting the prices of the genuine product sold by Amazon or other actual legit sellers. So customers are shown these fake products first, often not realising their not buying from Amazon.

From a sellers point of view (In the UK anyway) you have to go to the trouble paying for and registering barcodes with the likes of GS1 to list new products on Amazon, listing all the data relevant to the product and so on. Then a few weeks later you have a company in China selling something at a price lower on the product you have spent time gathering all the data to list on Amazon.

If you actually look in to these sellers it becomes apparent non of them have any real presence in the country. Amazon will accept any genuine UK company registration number with any random address. It is literally a case of going on Google and finding a genuine company / VAT number and Amazon will let you sell.

At the end of the day its all free sales data for Amazon to decide what Amazon basics products they are going to create next.

In regards to flash memory I'd only ever buy something like that from a reputable computer hardware supplier, in the UK I can recommend: 

• https://www.cclonline.com/
• https://www.scan.co.uk/
• https://www.ebuyer.com/
• https://www.mymemory.co.uk/

 

[Dick Montage]

What’s with the awkward formatting of your last few articles?

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 12/03/2023 at 19:00, Dick Montage said:

What’s with the awkward formatting of your last few articles?

You mean the single sentences? it might look a bit goofy on the desktop but reads great on a phone. A lot of this content comes from my Facebook Business page.

 

[i_was_here]

I have a different issue. I use dark mode on Neowin but your post has this weird white background. It also happens on mobile. And it also happens with your previous guide talking about registering domain names.

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 12/03/2023 at 21:51, i_was_here said:

I have a different issue. I use dark mode on Neowin but your post has this weird white background. It also happens on mobile. And it also happens with your previous guide talking about registering domain names.

Try now.

[i_was_here]

Thank you. It looks good now.

BTW I wanna ask: did you intentionally put the image as a link with a long-ass description instead of embedding it?

 

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 13/03/2023 at 21:08, i_was_here said:

Thank you. It looks good now.

BTW I wanna ask: did you intentionally put the image as a link with a long-ass description instead of embedding it?

 

See if that's any better. It may have been the file name from my facebook post, I just drug it to the desktop. I have since deleted the picture, renamed it with a short name and drug it back into the post.

[i_was_here]

Thanks for the quick response 👍

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Amazon, Aliexpress, Wish, and even other well known retailers have been doing it for years. Just now you tell us?

Just be sure to get a BRAND named product. All else are probably trash.

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 13/03/2023 at 21:25, Mindovermaster said:

Amazon, Aliexpress, Wish, and even other well known retailers have been doing it for years. Just now you tell us?

It's never too late. I still talk to people who tell me they are using a 1tb flash drive they got off Amazon for $20.

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 14/03/2023 at 09:51, cmcgregor80 said:

Thats because they aren't all trash. I got a 1tb usb stick from amazon and the only thing that was wrong was it was a usb2 not usb3 stick so slow as hell. Otherwise it holds 1tb data.

How much did you pay for it?

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 14/03/2023 at 09:56, cmcgregor80 said:

It was $30 but had that coupon checkmark some items get sometimes for $8. So $22

$22 for a 1TB flash drive?

That screams fake.

I would never trust that flash drive with my data.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

the scam market is HORRIBLE right now on Amazon; tech enthusiasts such as LTT and Austin Evans and others have even done videos about it recently.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 14/03/2023 at 11:44, cmcgregor80 said:

Sure probably lots of fakes. But i tested it and it holds the right amount of data, its slow to transfer but its legit. A duck isn't always a duck.

are you sure it's actually storing everything though? common tactic is a firmware modification so it just keeps writing over blocks; so even though the metadata is there some files may be written over as you keep adding things.

edit: I mentioned LTT doing a video on this recently; I'd recommend checking it out 

 

[Sikh]

On 14/03/2023 at 11:44, cmcgregor80 said:

Sure probably lots of fakes. But i tested it and it holds the right amount of data, its slow to transfer but its legit. A duck isn't always a duck.

Im sorry but there's no way you wrote 1TB data onto a USB 2 flash drive and tested all of the data. Its almost impossible to get the actual flash nand for $20 let alone build a flash drive out of it for that much.

I bet if you crack it open, itll be a 64gb flash nand.

[Dick Montage]

On 13/03/2023 at 00:01, Warwagon said:

You mean the single sentences?

No, the forced white background.

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 14/03/2023 at 16:37, Dick Montage said:

No, the forced white background.

ooo ya, I didn't even know about that. I never use dark mode on the site. But it should be fixed now.

On 14/03/2023 at 16:20, cmcgregor80 said:

the files on the drive far exceed 64gb 

But that's the thing, it will appear like all the data copied, when in fact once you reached the limit, it would start overwriting the stuff you already added. The files will look like they are there but they will be corrupted. In some of the videos they found the actual capacity to be 128gb so in that case you would have to of added more than 128GB, at which point some of your files would start to be come corrupted.

[Fleet Command]

Hello! Your friendly Fleet Command is here with his daily tips about writing better! 😊 The following sentence could use some improvements.

 

On 12/03/2023 at 14:33, Warwagon said:

They are a scam and should be avoided at all costs!

First, we have the grammatical problem of using a plural verb with a plural subject but a singular object. Consider one of the following: "They are scams," "They are part of a scam," or "They are fake."

Grammar aside, you said "at all costs," even though you're trying to help your readers incur zero costs! And while "at all cost" implies urgency, "should" means the opposite.

So, consider writing, "They are fake! Be wary of them."

[nekrosoft13]

On 14/03/2023 at 10:22, Brandon H said:

the scam market is HORRIBLE right now on Amazon; tech enthusiasts such as LTT and Austin Evans and others have even done videos about it recently.

this been going on for over 5 years if not longer...

Its just becoming more prevalent now.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 15/03/2023 at 14:03, nekrosoft13 said:

this been going on for over 5 years if not longer...

Its just becoming more prevalent now.

yep, it's becoming a problem how prevalent it is now though. It's not so much of an issue for anyone like us that has a bit of tech knowhow but for your average joe ...

[i_was_here]

On 15/03/2023 at 07:08, Fleet Command said:

Hello! Your friendly Fleet Command is here with his daily tips about writing better! 😊 The following sentence could use some improvements.

 

First, we have the grammatical problem of using a plural verb with a plural subject but a singular object. Consider one of the following: "They are scams," "They are part of a scam," or "They are fake."

Grammar aside, you said "at all costs," even though you're trying to help your readers incur zero costs! And while "at all cost" implies urgency, "should" means the opposite.

So, consider writing, "They are fake! Be wary of them."

Who needs Grammarly when we have Fleet Command? 😂

[RrnR]

As of today (Aug 2024), a reputable retailer in NZ (PBTech.co.nz - one with physical retail stores that couldn't afford to rip its customers off) has 1TB flash drives for around $350. That's the largest size they sell.  Anything you see that has sixteen times that capacity and costs only a few bucks is - well - it's too good to be true - and you know what they say about things that are too good to be true ...  

IT'S A SCAM!  

Sure you can write 16TB of data to a scam 16TB drive, but (assuming it's a 64GB drive set up to masquerade as a 16TB drive) everything after the first 64GB will overwrite the first 64GB.

[Batfink]

Steve Gibson at GRC developed a tool called ValiDrive to check the capacity of these fake drives if you want to verify your purchase.

https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm

[bikeman25]

I have a Sandisk that i paid under $50 for

Dual USB C/A Drive

256GB

Very slow to transfer files to said drive

But i'm not sure if its fake or not

Amazon 256GB Sandisk Flash drive

(Received as Christmas Gift 2023)  

 

Guess i should check this USB drive, and plug it into one of my faster USB Ports

Drive Is Valided, so guess its a real drive after all!

 

Edited August 18 by bikeman25