2TB USB drives.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

A friend of mine phoned today with a problem with his new USB stick. Windows 10 showed it as a 2TB drive, but it would not format. Since he paid only £6 for it, it was obviously not quite right. Kingston make real 2TB USB drives, they are much bigger physically than the run of the mill drives, and the price runs to four figures, not £6. I checked these out on ebay and there are plenty for sale. The sellers start by saying they are large, but deep in the description, a much smaller capacity is mentioned. Apparently, if you transfer large amounts of data onto one of these sticks, when the real capacity is reached, it just overwrites the data already onboard.

**LINK**

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Ebay has been selling stuff like personal music players and usb sticks for a long time with spoofed capacity that really only has small nominal memory. I got caught out once many years ago. The price is generally the clue.

Mymemory link

do a 1TB oem for £124.99 which gives a clue as to the likely best price a legitimate one would be.

pgk

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

I don't know about it these specific USB drives but a few years ago it was quite common to see large capacities advertised but they were much lower capacity but the innards had been doctored to report much higher capacity. Simply a scam to make cash from flogging cheap low capacity drives for much inflated prices.

John

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Hi there, OM,

There is a small programme on the web somewhere that will check the true capacity of either flash cards or USB sticks (aka 'thumb drives' ). I guess the writer wrote this programme in response to the high incidence of counterfeit devices from less-then-conscientious sellers.

I can't immediately give a link here – by the time I find it you could well have scored with some trial key words on Google.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Edit:  I put the following search phrase into Google and got lots of hits.  'software to check flash drive capacity'
 

Edited By Swarf, Mostly! on 03/04/2020 20:04:07

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

So … we have to ask … Is it fraudulent, when the description clearly [hidden in plain sight] states:

32G-2TB, the actual capacity is 32G, the actual capacity of 32G is about 29.5G, and only about 29.5GB can be stored, but it can display 2TB on the computer, and the detection is also 2TB.

Caveat Emptor indeed !!

MichaelG.

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

The link given by MichaelG seems unusually candid. These drives have been common on Ebay, at ridiculously low prices, for some time. I've never before noticed one that admits to being fraudulent.

[Kiwi BlokeParticipant @kiwibloke62605]

Possibly advertised for the benefit of crooked re-sellers?

[Clive SteerParticipant @clivesteer55943]

I read about low cost USB memory sticks supposedly with high memory capacities actually providing write only functionality. So when you move files to the stick they can't be retrieved and effectively you lose your data. It is possible that such devices could also download other nasties that you'd prefer not to have on your computer.

Clive

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 03/04/2020 20:04:55:

So … we have to ask … Is it fraudulent, when the description clearly [hidden in plain sight] states:

32G-2TB, the actual capacity is 32G, the actual capacity of 32G is about 29.5G, and only about 29.5GB can be stored, but it can display 2TB on the computer, and the detection is also 2TB.

Caveat Emptor indeed !!

MichaelG.

The seller is being 'honest' but purchasers are likely to be the folks who fit these inside USB hard drive cases along with a couple of old bolts and sell them as 2TB drives…

I think someone posted a dissection of one of these 'drives' on here some while ago.

Neil

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

A USB stick is one thing I would avoid totally on eBay and tread carefully on Amazon.

Mike

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

I have bought several USB sticks on ebay without any problems. The simple rules that I keep to are a UK seller with a top feedback score. I go for the lesser known makes, such as Trancend which are less likely to be worthwhile counterfeiting than Sandisk.

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