USB memory sticks. Too good to be true?

Thread Starter

Alec_t

Joined Sep 17, 2013
14,263
I see USB 3.0 rated memory sticks with claimed capacities of 1TB or 2TB advertised on Ebay for prices below £5. Are those capacities genuine? I believe rogue suppliers in the past have been known to sell other sticks which show up on Windows as having the claimed capacity but in reality have a much lower capacity.
Are the sticks likely to be fakes or rejects at that price? Anyone here had good/bad experiences with them?
 

Janis59

Joined Aug 21, 2017
1,827
If 1 TB is written, then at least 0,8 probably will get, that is first
Second - somehow wonder may it be so much cheap - then I want it as well.
Third - probably the main reason is hunger, because the most of Chinese plants are stopped to work before vaccine is ready.
Anyway, handle it with a care; was written that is demonstrated - money may carry (transport) a virus. It automatically means the postal packs may carry it as well, in contrast what was said previously. In today news was written, US Army got command to be ready use a force homeland, if the virus will spread there. So better dont joke being first Wuhan "clientele". As shows the this evening news, even face-masks are not effective against this plague.
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,788
Are the sticks likely to be fakes or rejects at that price?
I suspect they're counterfeit. I bought some 64GB microSD cards that had an actual capacity of 8GB. They may be employing a similar trick on USB drives.

If anyone buys one, do some tests and let us know...
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,024
Less than 5 Pounds is unrealistic even for 3.0. Yes they can be had in Terabyte size, but not cheap. The key is the throughput rate. I would suspect, at that price, they may be 2.0 design and 3.0 compatible and at a very slow rate. YMMV
 

Janis59

Joined Aug 21, 2017
1,827
RE:""I bought some 64GB microSD cards that had an actual capacity of 8GB""
Oho!! I knew that 2,2 Chinese kilowatts may be easily fed by two AAA finger-batteries for whole week if not month, but I didnt realized its true even for memory sticks....
 

peterdeco

Joined Oct 8, 2019
484
I bought 3 sticks with 130GB last year from China. 2 died in 1 week, 3rd died the following week. Don't trust it as the sole backup for valuable files.
 

MrSoftware

Joined Oct 29, 2013
2,186
Not only are they fakes, they might even come with a free virus. In a best case, they write the firmware to report sizes larger than they actually are.

 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,788
they write the firmware to report sizes larger than they actually are.
And once you use the actual capacity, they start overwriting data. I use the counterfeit cards to shuffle data around. I just need to make sure I don't fill the actual capacity and start losing data.
 

Ian Rogers

Joined Dec 12, 2012
1,136
If 1 TB is written, then at least 0,8 probably will get, that is first
Second - somehow wonder may it be so much cheap - then I want it as well.
Third - probably the main reason is hunger, because the most of Chinese plants are stopped to work before vaccine is ready.
Anyway, handle it with a care; was written that is demonstrated - money may carry (transport) a virus. It automatically means the postal packs may carry it as well, in contrast what was said previously. In today news was written, US Army got command to be ready use a force homeland, if the virus will spread there. So better dont joke being first Wuhan "clientele". As shows the this evening news, even face-masks are not effective against this plague.
What kind of answer is this..... Where has this come from..
 

Hymie

Joined Mar 30, 2018
1,274
I have purchased tf cards on ebay with a claimed capacity of 128GB.
Under Windows operating system they show as 128GB, but have been spoofed to do this (they were actually 32GB cards).
I have software to test the memory, it does not show the claimed memory capacity to be spoofed, but shows only 32GB to be ‘good’ memory.
I complained to ebay and got a refund, with the seller’s listing removed.
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
18,061
I see USB 3.0 rated memory sticks with claimed capacities of 1TB or 2TB advertised on Ebay for prices below £5. Are those capacities genuine? I believe rogue suppliers in the past have been known to sell other sticks which show up on Windows as having the claimed capacity but in reality have a much lower capacity.
Are the sticks likely to be fakes or rejects at that price? Anyone here had good/bad experiences with them?
I only purchase memory sticks from Micro-Center and I have not had problems with any of them yet.
 

BobaMosfet

Joined Jul 1, 2009
2,110
I see USB 3.0 rated memory sticks with claimed capacities of 1TB or 2TB advertised on Ebay for prices below £5. Are those capacities genuine? I believe rogue suppliers in the past have been known to sell other sticks which show up on Windows as having the claimed capacity but in reality have a much lower capacity.
Are the sticks likely to be fakes or rejects at that price? Anyone here had good/bad experiences with them?
'ebay' was your first clue....
 

Hymie

Joined Mar 30, 2018
1,274
The software I use to test is ‘H2testw’ – free downloads are available from a number of websites.

The scan time very much depends on the PC access time to the memory device; genuine 128GB takes a few hours (write then read).

Once the software encounters corrupt write/read errors, things slow dramatically as the software reports the errors; corrupt 128GB (actually 32GB) took over 10 hours and counting – showing only 32GB good.
 
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