Dont make my mistake - cheap USB sticks on ebay

[Keya]

Just wanted to share a little story about something i had to learn the hard way lol. Some or perhaps many of you are already aware of this, but if not, read on so I can save you $40. (And apologies to those of you who are reading this thinking "well, duh!")

I dont need USB sticks often and have a few small ones already that usually suffice, but i wanted to get a big one so i could copy all my comedy movies/mp3s/standup comedy etc to a friend of mine who is going through a rough stage in this rollercoaster of life. (I highly rate laughter as a quality affordable medicine and try to get 30mins a day as part of my diet!)

Anyway, there are plenty of cheap USB sticks on ebay, and of course many of them are perfectly valid and you do get what you pay for, especially when you stick to the known good brands. But the cheap ones with no brand, claiming 1-2TB for the same price as 32GB ones etc ... well, I just assumed it would probably be a poor quality 2TB - something that would be fine for letting me transfer 2GB to my friend but not something youd want to use for longterm backup kinda thing! but it turns out these USB sticks have controllers that LIE to the OS about their true size (the drive will actually report to the OS "yes this drive has 2000GB" even if the drive only has 32). And the sad thing is most buyers report back with positive feedback, because the OS tells them the drive is the size they expected, and when they try to copy a few files it'll work fine... it's only when they copy more than say 32GB of files (or whatever true size is) they'll notice they've been ripped off, and they might not realise that for months. They may not ever realise it - it seems like you can copy 2TB to the drive, and the OS will report it successfully copied 2TB, but only 32GB of it would've been written - you'll see all the files there, but opening them in a hex editor = all null chars.

I found this blog and the tools mentioned useful http://www.raymond.cc/blog/test-and-det ... h-h2testw/ and the ChipGenius tool was able to immediately recognize my "2TB" drive as having a 32GB chip. The reason I suspected something was wrong was because after copying a lot of files to the drive I checked and many of them were just 100% null chars. Apparently I could use some software to change the disk so it reports its true size of 32GB, but I think i'll just cut my $40 loss, swallow my pride and throw the drive out - I just can't trust it. At least it wasn't too expensive a lesson to learn, but $40 is still a lot of money to me. My friend now has one of my 64GB usb drives... not quite the 2000 i hoped to give her!:(

ps. apparently there are also SSD cards with this same fraudulent issue, so not just USB drives

[applePi]

Thanks Keya for the warning, this is like the old scandal about the fake cache memory on the motherboard in the days of intel cpu DX4 (x486 cpu), i have owned a motherboard in which there are just plastic small squares carved on it the size of external cache memory, and when checking the pc spec the cache memory are much smaller and these plastic squares just a fake.
i suggest to you keya to send a complain to ebay admins so to stop that seller, you can pass to them the link to the software to check the usb size.

[Keya]

fake plastic squares for cache! far out thats terrible
Yes i have started the complaints process with ebay, but basically it says I should send it back to the seller (yeah right, im not paying any more!), and if I dont hear anything back in 7 days i can engage with ebay support about it, so im waiting for that. I also sent a screenshot of the ChipGenius report of it. I'm not expecting to get any of my money back, but maybe they'll block the seller, i don't know, but that's basically all I can do. It's frustrating though to see so many "thanks, received promptly" etc positive feedback for it from buyers who don't yet know they've been ripped off!

[DontTalkToMe]

If you payed with paypal, my experience up to this point has always been positive, in your case the object received was materially different from what advertised (I hope, I didn't see the insertion, can you link that?) plus there was a clear fraudulent intent. I would try make that last part clear, and consequently you are not going to spend more money to send it back to a thief.
You will get your money back, you just have to act that way from the start, not asking IF you can get your money back.
You left negative feedback immediately, right ? If not, run and do it.
And thanks for the warning.

[Dude]

Yep, these storage device scams have been going on for literally years. I would NEVER buy a storage device online at all. Always buy from a local shop with a credit card so you can (a) physically go back if there's a problem and (b) get a refund from your bank by doing a credit card chargeback.

Also, the same scam involves generic MP3 players: they're advertised as 128 GB and so on, but once low-level formatted, they're only like 16 GB or something. Buyer beware.

i'll just cut my $40 loss, swallow my pride and throw the drive out

Don't do that. Just low-level format it and you'll have a drive of 32 GB, rather than nothing for your $40.

[Keya]

actually i did pay 1) via PayPal and 2) using my credit card, so maybe ive got 2 options to get a chargeback, i'll certainly look into that now thanks for the tip
i was just reading another page that listed quite a lot of "legit" ones too like Sandisk, Corsair, Kingston etc also having some counterfeit versions on the market, just to muddy the waters further

Dude, i havent thrown it out yet. ChipGenius positively identified it by its Flash ID as a Toshiba 32GB chip (assuming i can trust that!?), so if i can revert it to report 32GB and all sectors test clear maybe i can trust it, but it'll go to the back of the pile!

[tj1010]

The three things that make bad thumb drives are bad soldering, bad analog design, and bad NAND or NOR chips(low read/write cycles). The first two the only solution is to buy Sandisk or Kingston or another big name. The latter two effects all of them and there is chip differences even inside single models.

I think Sandisk has a NOR chip that has the most cycles currently but it's probably in RAID SSDs or something. Solid-state is extremely poor in durability and economy compared to magnetic and optical. All of this is why I have SATA 600 <-> USB 3.1 enclosures.

[Keya]

just a followup, it was easy enough to get the money back from ebay, phew! first time i'd had to try their buyer protection thing

I also bought another 2Tb drive (i bought two at the same time before i knew of this scam), and surprise surprise - it's not 2Tb either. It says 2Tb on the case of the drive itself, and is sold as 2Tb, but Windows reports it as being only 12GB lol -- they were too lazy to even bother getting the controller to lie with this one!!! But because it's not lying about its size it seems like it should be ok to use. Its USB3.0 too.

So in the end i got two USB sticks for $0, but i still don't have the high capacity drive i need. Will have to give the sounds-too-good-to-be-true cheapies a miss (turns out they're too good to be true) and source a more reputable brand, possibly Sandisk or Kingston as mentioned in previous post by tj1010, although even those have had some counterfeits. ALWAYS DO A PHYSICAL CAPACITY TEST!

[DontTalkToMe]

just a followup, it was easy enough to get the money back from ebay, phew! first time i'd had to try their buyer protection thing

I'm happy for you.

In short, if it says 2TB and it's too cheap, you can count on the fact it's a scam independently from the advertised manufacturer which can be fake as well.

I'll ask again, can you share the link on ebay you used to buy this garbage ? If it's still visible.

[Keya]

I just thought the savings would be from poor-quality 2000GB - maybe something you could use for a year or two but nothing you'd want to use for anything serious or longterm, but still the capacity advertised... but nope!

To find them on ebay just do a search for USB drive and search by Lowest Price, eg ...
"2 terabytes" for GBP 12.99 (~US$17.26) with free shipping from Hong Kong:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2TB-1TB-512GB-2 ... e4iOahtwgg
Going to the sellers page and checking their Negative Feedback for the past 1 month, lol:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... egative_30
Another giveaway is the ones like this that don't even have any brand or printing on the case - just a plain case. There are of course legit 16/32/etc GB USB sticks with clear cases - ive had one thats been fine for a few years, but be wary of ones claiming anything more than say 64!

[DontTalkToMe]

To find them on ebay just do a search for USB drive and search by Lowest Price, eg ...

I was asking specifically for the seller you bought from, I have no doubt you can find many of them with a simple search sorted by ascending price

Going to the sellers page and checking their Negative Feedback for the past 1 month, lol:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... egative_30

So I imagine this is not the one you bought from, unless you are a masochist.

[Keya]

the ones i got have been taken down sorry. I'm not sure why/how the one i just linked to is still up given how much negative feedback they've had, but perhaps it just hasn't been reported yet i dont know

[DontTalkToMe]

OK, yes, it's insane the one you linked it's still able to swindle freely

[Ramihyn_]

why report them when you can get free 32gb sticks from them

[Keya]

you can't really trust them though not only are they scam/counterfeit, but the quality is probably the cheapest the scammer can get and possibly dodgy chips sold cheap due to defects, so i'm struggling to think of a time i'll be able to use them - i dont want half my copied files existing as null chars, and its annoying/takes time to do full data verification!

maybe i'll write a quick little test app to fill & verify as it goes, run that a few times over a few days to ensure everythings ok, only then i can trust it (to some extent)