There are so many of these drives now flooded on eBay and there are many people still buying them being ripped off and scammed. Fake memory drives have cracked hardware that will display fake/oversize capacity when you connect it to your computer. It may appear you can load this capacity on the drive, but as soon as you go over its real capacity the files will become corrupted and read strange file names.

The free program H2testw has proved its worth in detecting flash drives which have been programmed to miss-report capacity. You can easily find this program using Google. The interface is in German but has the option to run in English. It is free and standalone. Nothing is installed into the operating system. You should use H2testw for testing counterfeit USB Flash Drives for the following reasons:

   1. Easy to Use
   2. Tested to work on 1.1 and 2.0 USB Ports
   3. Tested to work to analyze drives advertised as 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and yes …64 GB capacity.
   4. Reports what the operating system sees size to be.
   5. Will write 1 GB files up to the reported size - requiring no work on your part except patience if it is a large drive and a slow computer
   6. Will read all the files it wrote and verify them
   7. Will report that the test ran without problems if all is well
   8. Will produce a detailed report showing the true capacity, how much data has been lost/corrupted and whether there are aliased memory addresses if problems are found.
   9. Output results can easily be copied and pasted into notepad to be saved as a text file.
  10. The program is free

The readme.txt file provides:

    * Explanation of the program and what it does for general computer users
    * Information on how to interpret the results
    * Technical information for those who have a deeper understanding of data storage and file writing and for the skeptics out there.

It has been invaluable to those who now test all flash they buy to avoid potential data loss arising from use of a falsely programmed device.

Save the downloaded zip file to your desktop an run the exe file in the folder to install the program on your computer. To test your flash launch the program, select your language (German or English) and select the target drive.



The program will fill your device with numbers and letters in 1000Mb lots and then try to read it back . If your device works as claimed it will tell you that the test ran without problems and you can delete the test files. If not you will get a detailed report.

    Sample Output For A Fake 64 GB Drive

    The media is likely to be defective.
    3.8 GByte OK (8084847 sectors)
    58.6 GByte DATA LOST (122921617 sectors)
    Details:710.5 KByte overwritten (1421 sectors)
    7.6 MByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 15630 sectors)
    58.6 byte corrupted (122904566 sectors)
    710.5 KByte aliased memory (1421 sectors)
    First error at offset: 0×000000003cef8470
    Expected: 0xeb7ac43a237c5170
    Found: 0xeb7a843a237c5170
    H2testw version 1.3
    Writing speed: 9.24 MByte/s
    Reading speed: 10.8 MByte/s
    H2testw v1.4

This is 4GB USB flash drive not a 64GB USB flash drive. It is of poor quality. As 4GB drive it should be about 3.9 GB not 3.8 GB formatted. This indicates in low level formatting a lot of bad sectors had to be locked out. Since this stick only has 4 GB real capacity, what will happen if you put 64 GB of data on it? In many cases the firmware hack is so complete that Windows will copy into oblivion without any error. Of course it only can read back 4 GB of that data, when you read back the rest it’s all random garbage or filled with zeros. You will not notice when you copy the data on to the stick, you will not notice it when you copy the data off the stick. The only place you will notice is when you try to actually use the data. At that point the data will be corrupt and unusable. You might then even attribute that to something else and not the stick.

What are you going to do with your dumb stick? You can get a refund mostly, so you should not be too concerned. Shipping it back is usually not even wanted by the fakers, so now you got a dead stick for free... Look for fake sellers before you buy. Please check all negative and neutral feedbacks of sellers and if people report counterfeit/fake usb drives then don't buy from these sellers! Always remember sellers can not offer a 32Gb drive or a 64GB drive for only $25 or $35 dollars! After you get the stick, test with H2testw before you leave any feedback! If it’s fake, demand a full refund (including shipping), immediately!



Buying Flash Drives On eBay – How To Protect Yourself

Here is a check list followed by details on each:

1) Price
2) Positive Feedback
3) Private Auctions
4) Seller eBay Country
5) Seller Advance Contact On A Drive Offered

Price.

Do not think the price for the drive is a very good indicator to tell if it is a fake or not. Some fakes sell for very low prices. Some fakes sell for high prices, often only 25% lower than what you would pay at your local computer store. Always remember sellers can not offer a 32Gb drive or a 64GB drive for only $25 or $35 dollars!

Positive Feedback.

A Seller with a very high feedback score, with lots of people saying that the drive is great does not means the drive offered is not a fake. False capacity drives have a large enough capacity to fool the quick tests most eBayers do. Worse still, once they find out that they have a fake, they think it is too late to challenge the seller about the drive. Actually even if a seller refuses to cooperate, you must leave follow up feedback to warn other eBayers.

There are documented cases of sellers demanding that an eBayer leave positive feedback as a condition of a refund. Blackmail! But also true. So do not rely only on positive feedback to decide to bid on a drive.

Private Auctions.

Never bid on a drive that is listed as a private auction! Why? You might think this is for your protection. It is not for your protection, it is to protect the seller - from being discovered.

eBay describes private auction as:

When a seller creates a private listing, a buyer’s User ID does not appear in the listing or in the listing’s bid history. Only the seller is authorized to view the buyer User IDs associated with that listing. Examples of when sellers use this format include the sale of high-priced items, or approved pharmaceutical products.

Flash drives are not medical products. Private auctions are for high priced items, generally in the range of more than $150 US , usually $200 US and higher. A drive won at $15 US or even $40 US or even $70 US does not fall under the description from eBay.

Sellers are abusing this listing type to avoid being detected. eBay offers a lot of protection for its members. They have introduced hiding the ids of bidders who lost in an auction so they can not be contacted by other sellers to offer them similar merchandise. Also to stop other eBayers from researching the bidding strategies used by an eBayer during the auction.

When a seller uses this kind of listing for a flash drive:

    1) There will be no information on what the eBayer bought in feedback, either for buyer or for seller.
    2) There will be no eBay item id on record in the Sellers feedback, for other potential buyers to examine.
    3) If an eBayer leaves negative feedback you have no real information on what they are complaining or warning about. You can not inspect the item, to see if it happens to be the drive you might be interested in bidding on.

This is a clever strategy. It violates the intent of private auctions. You have almost a 99% guarantee that if the flash drive has a starting bid under $20 US and is a private auction - the drive is a fake. Investigation has revealed that drives have been sold for as little as $8 US using this type of auction and were fakes.

Seller eBay Country

Do not think that all fake drives come from sellers in the Orient or Asia. This is not true. You can just as easily buy a fake drive from a Seller in your own country. There are many eBayers who can tell you they bought locally to avoid getting a fake. But they ended up with a fake all the same.

It is more than likely the drives were reprogrammed in the Orient and Asia. The penalties for doing this in other countries can be very high. The reprogrammed drives are then distributed world wide. Some local sellers know the drives are fakes but some do not - having bought wholesale in good faith.

Also since many eBayers do not like to buy from sellers located outside their own country, a number of foreign sellers register locally in the eBayer’s country. In some cases they have a “Trading Partner”. The eBayer will only learn that the drive is from abroad once it arrives in the mail with Foreign Postage. If they find it is a fake and the seller demands it be returned as a condition of refund, the address to return to is not local, but in Asia or the Orient.

Seller Advance Contact On A Drive Offered

You would think that if you contacted a seller asking if he or she certifies that the drive they are offering truly is the advertised capacity and they reply Yes! , you are safe.

Unfortunately, this is often not the case. There are many eBayers who did this and got confirmation from the seller that the drive does hold the true capacity advertised, who now own a fake. Mostly this happens when the seller is unaware that the drive they are selling is a fake. Sellers who know they are selling fakes will not reply to you. You are showing consumer awareness and that is one thing they don’t need.

Trying to get your money back from a victim Seller is no easier than from a Seller who knows they are selling fakes.

So the evidence is that contacting the seller is not very productive as a way to protect you from getting a fake drive.

Other hints:

For 32 or 64 GB advertised capacity drives, watch out! Research the internet for the selling price of these drives from reputable internet sellers to see what they cost. Compare the prices against what the Sellers on eBay are offering. That should make things clear to you.

If the listing advertises a brand name, go to the manufacture’s site. If they don’t offer the model in the size advertised on eBay you can be certain it is a fake.

You don’t have to go to eBay to dig through a seller’s feedback to find negatives or neutrals. For a volume seller you could take a very long time to spot a problem. There is an easy way, a quick way to check out a Seller. Go to the following site:

http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs

Put in the sellers Id, press the button and wait to see what comes up.

In moments you can check the feedback to see if the drive you are interested in is listed and if an eBayer before you reported it as a fake. This is your best weapon to find out if the drive you want has been reported as a fake!

If you only see one report of a fake for the model you are interested in, do not consider bidding on this drive! Few people test their drives for the complete advertised capacity when they receive it. This is how a Seller of fakes can actually continue to sell. Remember some sellers use black mail to get positive feedback. You want your money back - leave me positive feedback first!

If you see a seller responding to negative or neutrals saying it is a manufacturing defect be wary!

If you see a seller saying that it probably was damaged in the mail, be even more alert! Flash drives can be very robust. Some survive two minutes in a fire, 10 hours submerged in Cola-Cola and many accidentally washed in the laundry survive too, to the relief of the owner. They are made of the same materials used in Ram chips. If you have an old computer - you know what the temperature can be like inside of it. Ram chips don’t die easily. There are ancient desktops and laptops working just fine with chips over 10 years old.