USB flash drive ripoffs--what to do?

onenote

Someone posted a deal here about a dual 128 GB Sandisk flash drive for ~$30. I have not bought a flash drive for a while so I got curious what the current prices are for flash drives. I did a search on amazon and found some amazing (to me) prices: for example
Amazon 128 GB for $10.99

As expected 34% of the reviews are one star. Here is a comment to one of the reviews:
*Your experience is typical for fake-capacity flash drives - low capacity drives with only 4GB, 8GB or perhaps 16GB of real memory (a $3 to $5 value) that have been altered and relabeled by dishonest suppliers to make them appear to have a much greater inflated capacity - 128GB in this case. They may appear to work at first, but failures and data loss are inevitable.

If you look at the other reviews for this and similar unusually low-priced, high-capacity generic USB flash drives, you will see a clear pattern of other reviewers reporting similar problems.*

I am in the market for a drive and my question is what brands are reliable? I have the usual big names, Kingston, Sandisk, Corsair, but I have gotten great service from no-name brands like Emprex. Has it gotten to where we have to stick to the big names to avoid ripoffs?

FrugalFreak

sandisk, PNY. Kingston are legit brands, I’d stay away from unfamiliar brands. I really hate that even the name brands reduced warranties from lifetime to 6 months to year, shows a lesser quality overall.

zapjb

It’s not the brands it’s the sellers that are counterfeiting the drives. This is my experience. Never buy flash drives or memory cards from eBay NEVER.

The following is a guide to use 2 tools to test memory & text I c&p added & subtracted from so I’ll remember. Again the programs are not mine & the vast majority of the text is not my work.

h2testw_1.4
On start choose English
H2testw 1.4 – Gold Standard In Detecting USB Counterfeit Drives
English How to

FAKEFLASHTEST
All about ‘Fake’ SD cards and USB Flash drives

My personal Text File:
2 Tools to Test and Detect Fake or Counterfeit USB Flash Drives.txt

ONLY 2 are GOOD Tools

4 Tools to Test and Detect Fake or Counterfeit USB Flash Drives
HAL9000 Updated 9 months ago Software 36 Comments

There are plenty of fake and counterfeit products around and the world of computers is not exempt. In recent years one area has become more prone to this than any other, and that is flash memory storage. Devices such as USB flash drives, SD/CF cards and even SSD drives have been affected by this problem. Counterfeit USB flash drives seem to be the most common though, there’s so many different types, capacities and speeds that it’s easy to hide them among all the real products.

You may think this problem only affects places like eBay but even Amazon and other legitimate retailers have been caught out too. This is why it’s a good idea to check any flash device you purchase is the product you paid for. Making sure the serial or code number on the stick is legitimate is one way, another is making sure the drive is the size advertised because most fake drives have a lower real capacity than listed by using smaller and much cheaper memory chips. The drive may even be reported as the right size in windows.

Software developers are also aware of this and some have written tools to help you identify if a drive is smaller than you expect and is therefore likely to be counterfeit. Here we have listed 4 for you to try that are designed to check for fake size drives.

H2testw

For several years H2testw has been known as THE tool for checking memory based flash drives to see if they are the correct capacity. The problem is it was developed several years ago and the last release was way back in 2008, flash based media is available in much larger capacities now and a scan with H2testw can run into several hours because it hasn’t been optimized to run on big drives.

The method used in H2testw, while very slow is still one of the most thorough ways to scan the drive for a fake capacity. It isn’t a fully destructive test because it only checks the free space on the drive, but the best way is to use H2testw on a cleanly formatted device, that way it will be checked completely from the first byte to the last. It works by writing large 1GB files to the free space and then reading them back, the idea being if the read data isn’t the same as what was written, there’s a possible issue.

After it’s done the software leaves the test files on the media, you can erase them if you like or verify them again. If you have the time and want a very thorough test, try H2testw, if not try something that works a bit quicker first. H2testw defaults to German language but you can easily change it in the GUI.

FakeFlashTest

The FakeFlashTest utility is from the developer of the RMPrepUSB multipurpose USB booting suite. One component of the RMPrepUSB program is a small and quick test to check your drive and its real capacity, this is an extended and enhanced version of that which has been released as a standalone executable. Unlike many other tools of this type, FakeFlashTest is quite new so includes optimizations and methods better suited for today’s flash media.

FakeFlashTest tries to fix the main issue with H2testw which is the incredibly slow time it can take for the process to complete on larger and slower flash drives. The first test you can run is similar to the one found in RMPrepUSB and a quick test. This writes and reads 512 bytes of data at set intervals across the drive and so finishes in less time. The second test is very similar to H2testw and writes/reads to all free space on the drive but has been optimized in a number of ways to complete the task much quicker than H2testw.

Do note that the the quick test is destructive meaning anything on the drive will be overwritten, so make sure your files are backed up. The slower test is not meant to be destructive but can still corrupt your files if they are on a bad area of the drive.

onenote

Thanks. I use flash drives for long term backup of valuable data so I need to go extra steps to help with reliability. Looks like:

buy from reliable supplier who allows refunds
look for signs of counterfeiting in packaging and drive. I ran across some things to look for by doing a search.
Run H2testw suggested by zapjb if the drive is small enough so the test finishes in a reasonable time.
Otherwise try the FakeFlashTest program
Do a test of the data on the drive after creating the backup. How long to wait–a few weeks?

zapjb

My experience sorry to say is data always gets corrupted on SD cards & Flash Drives.

Whether it’s 6 months, a year or whatever data always get corrupted. I’ve storing on this media for years, many many legit top of the line drives. They ALWAYS corrupt files after a time.

Ime the best media are HDD followed by SSD & DVDs.

And with all these the best solution is multiple multiple multiple copies on different media & in different locations.

FrugalFreak

@zapjb said in USB flash drive ripoffs--what to do?:

My experience sorry to say is data always gets corrupted on SD cards & Flash Drives.

Whether it’s 6 months, a year or whatever data always get corrupted. I’ve storing on this media for years, many many legit top of the line drives. They ALWAYS corrupt files after a time.

Ime the best media are HDD followed by SSD & DVDs.

And with all these the best solution is multiple multiple multiple copies on different media & in different locations.

i remove my data to desktop folder and reformat every now and then, it helps

rick505

@onenote said in USB flash drive ripoffs--what to do?:

Thanks. I use flash drives for long term backup of valuable data so I need to go extra steps to help with reliability. Looks like:

buy from reliable supplier who allows refunds

look for signs of counterfeiting in packaging and drive. I ran across some things to look for by doing a search.

Run H2testw suggested by zapjb if the drive is small enough so the test finishes in a reasonable time.

Otherwise try the FakeFlashTest program

Do a test of the data on the drive after creating the backup. How long to wait–a few weeks?

In my experience if teh size is faked the data will be corrupted immediately once you exceed the native capacity of the card. You should detect this earlier in your steps however. Actually I’d suggest in addition to above always make multiple backups of “valuable data” and if really valuable store in multiple locations. Three copies stored in your desk won’t do much good after a fire in the space.