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| I bought a fake flash drive off Amazon! by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 10/01/2022, 1:53am PDT | ||||
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| As a responsible person I do backup my data to protect it from loss. I wanted a reasonably sized backup device (over 128GB, i have a lot, of files, more than a million; I have downloaded a lot of things, and I work on or write quite a few pieces of software), but less bulky than my current "backup solution," a full-size 4TB ruggedized portable (magnetic) drive. "Ruggedized" means if it falls off a table or computer to the floor, it does nor become an expensive paperweight. I was trying SD cards but when you have like a dozen of them, it's hard to remember which is which.
So I decided on jump (flash) drives. Of literally hundreds I bought two, One was a "Micro Center SuperSpeed 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Gum Size Memory Stick Thumb Drive Data Storage Jump Drive (256G) " the other was a "Marryler USB Flash Drive 256GB Waterproof USB Drive 256GB High Speed Memory Stick 256GB Ultra Large Storage Metal Thumb Drive with Keychain Design for Laptop Computer Tablet". The Micro Center one - a great company that sells electronics and computer supplies, at very good prices - was $17.99. The aluminum one was ridiculously low priced at $11.99. I suspected it might be fake. but if it is I could return it. I ran "FakeFlashTest" a program that does destructive write tests on the drive to check what capacity it actually is. "Destructive" means it will erase (destroy) any data on the drive, not that it will damage the device. The program has two test modes, fast and slow. For a drive with this much space could take days to check all of it. Fast just does less intensive tests, and does low-level writes. I started the program, it warned me that the drive will be completely erased, so much so it will have to be reformatted to be able to use it. It requested (twice!) I want to do this. I did. It went through its 5% tests, until it got to 90% and stalled. I closed the program and tried again. I fell asleep while it was running. A few hours later, I awoke to find it awake and screaming error after error, then it finished. What did I find out? The program declared that (1) it was fake, and (2) it took over 14,000 seconds (over 4 hours!) to determine this. So, I decided on reporting this to Amazon. I tried clicking on the "report inaccurate information" button. I selected "not as described" and the following explanation: "I'm not sure what the capacity on this drive is, but it's way less than 256GiB. I ran a test program to be sure it worked. It had errors, meaning it's a "Fake Flash Drive," one programmed to report more space than it has. The seller might not be responsible; whoever constructed this device, is." The operative word here is "tried" to report it, as clicking the button did not work. So, I'll report it when I indicate I want to return the item. |
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I bought a fake flash drive off Amazon! by 10/01/2022, 1:53am PDT  |
