Has anyone bought fake usb drives from AliExpress?
Like this 64tb one from Lenovo for 10 bucks
Like I'm positive they'll be fake. I just don't understand why they would make it this absurd. Like can you even get a 64tb USB drive? Why would they make it so cheap?
I'm tempted to just buy for shits and giggles and see how bad they actually are.
I'm actually tempted. Although not wanting to encourage scammers and hoping there's no malware on it
Like, do it for, like , science.
Why when you know they're fake?
Wut? Surely everyone knows 64TB. Only costs $10.
Seems like the description/labelling is incorrect
says TB instead of GB.
Obviously the seller has "no idea"
They probably just copied another listing and thier mistakes along with it.
Id stay away just because of that
And all but one of the reviews are fake as well.
Typical of AliExpress reviews - you cannot count on them
Except the last one that says they are "fake"
I bought a couple of these MicroDrive USB 3.0 128GB flash drives off Temu at similar price and they are actually quite good.
Fully tested with excellent read speed, reasonable write speed and full 128GB capacity.
The reviews seem to confirm what I have experienced.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004281047159.html?spm=a2…
Seems like the description/labelling is incorrect
says TB instead of GB.
Obviously the seller has “no idea”
Accidents happen.
HeWhoKnows on 02/09/2024 - 14:35
In a Windows laptop look for minimum 16GB to 32GB RAM and 1GB SSD
Or at least ask the bloke in control of the ransomware to report back on your behalf.
why
There’s a sucker born every minute
My old workmate was convinced he had found bargain of century for a 1tb usb, only to report back it’s fake when he tried to move files.
At least we’re only talking a few dollars.
It's only a few dollars - plus the cost of losing the data, whatever that happens to be. That cost will range from nothing to priceless…
can you even imagine losing 64 Terabytes of porn……just crazy!
Try out YouTube or Reddit if you're curious.
Fake capacity. Everything beyond the real capacity is gone.
Buy one and report back if you can figure out the real size.
Seriously??? Anything you buy out of China is 99% likely to be counterfeit. An item such as this 100% counterfeit - guaranteed.
Will people ever learn?
78.24% of statistics are just made up.
As is 99%.
Anything you buy out of China is 99% likely to be counterfeit.
My mate's wife seems real. He assures me that correct female parts are all there.
but having been raised on fake porn, he believes that avatar is his real wife
Anything you buy out of China is 99% likely to be counterfeit
Its true. Only one out of every 100 iphones are real. Guaranteed.
Will people ever learn ???
Unsure if serious. R U OK m8?
5 negs so far - seems I have upset some of the Chinese OZB members?
Probably more the case of people seeing through your 99%/counterfeit nonsense.
The author of this USB drive validation software already conducted an experiment and bought a dozen inexpensive drives from Amazon during September 2023 and all of them were bogus. https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm
I don't think there's a need to conduct your "buy and see if it's legit" experiment (the store has 1011 1-star reviews), but your money your business I suppose.
Flash storage is easily one of the most scammable products in China, due to how easy it is to reprogram the NAND memory controller to report a false capacity and let the computer continually over-write your existing data in a loop.
These fraudulent drives contain just enough storage – typically 64GB – to convincingly hold the file system's directory listing. But once its first 64GB of storage space has been filled, the contents of any additional files will not actually be stored. Their names, dates and sizes will be stored in the directory at the front of the drive. Everything will appear to be fine. But the files' contents will be blank because they were “stored” where no storage exists.
Operating systems do not verify that the data they write was actually written. They rely upon the honesty of storage devices to report errors. If a write error occurs, then the operating system will rewrite the data elsewhere. But these deliberately fraudulent drives never report any problems – they just silently discard any data written where there's no storage.
The first indication of a problem occurs when you attempt to read back a stored file. Even that will appear to work… but the file itself will be empty!
These fraudulent drives contain just enough storage – typically 64GB – to convincingly hold the file system's directory listing. But once its first 64GB o
64GB seems a bit high to hold a directory table… did he mean 64MB?
It would be too expensive to make 64Mb anything these days
Appreciate this. Just checked my 64GB SD card that i bought in July and it is infact 17GB. Though i only needed a few GB its good to know the exact capacity. Nevertheless, got instant refund from ali. Thanks!
Free 17GB drives, not too bad haha
thanks m8 - that was gr8
I'm tempted to just buy for shits and giggles and see how bad they actually are.
I did that with a tablet. I bought it on AliExpress expecting that at the price at least some of the specs would turn out to be fake. What I didn't expect was that they all would be. They simply lied about everything. I wrote what it cost off as a learning experience. Any time I see something that looks like its a bargain on AliExpress I don't have to wonder whether it might be, I just have to remember that tablet.
Yeah I'd spend a couple of bucks. Not going to spend hundreds. Did you end up getting your money back?
Yep same with me.
CPU was a mediatek but advertised as a snapdragon. Android 13 was actually an android 8 with modified bloatware. wifi 7 was clearly not even wifi 6. That 50MP camera with 4k UHD 60FPS was a measily 2MP 720P 30 FPS junk. Got my money back after lodging complaint but still lost money on return postage which they say they would honour but never did.
The seller tried to scam you and you actually returned the item?
wasnt gona get anything back otherwise. $50 lesson learnt (return postage). Item cost $170.
Perfect gift for office x-mas gift exchange if you get matched with a colleague you hate.
I'm tempted to buy a bunch to hand them out to other at my work so I can find out who are the idiots.
Do it. Waste your time. Waste your money. Think you've scored yourself a deal. It's people like you who ensure that unscrupulous sellers continue to try this shit.
Just to be the voice of dissent.
I have two flash drives purchased from Aliexpress.
They're generic 8GB USB2.0. I paid a total of US$5.85.
Happily, they've checked out both in capacity and speeds. TBH, they're actually the fastest of my USB2.0 devices in my collection.
Having a believable capacity helps. There is a lot of perfectly functioning hardware on such sites, but you do need to know what can reasonably exist and have the discipline not to pounce on deals that are obviously to good to be true.
I just don't understand why they would make it this absurd.
Well they got you interested, imagine how many people are as curious as you and fork out the money.
There is a lot about these if you google around. They are usually 16-32gb and are firmware modified to display 2tb or whatever. You can partition them to the right size and use them, but I wouldn't trust them.
Best to purchase that type of stuff from an Australian supplier. You then have warranty. No warranty from Chinese supplier.
I bought a 256gb usb stick a couple of years ago for $20 from aliexpress. Always check the 1 star reviews, they are the most accurate in terms of capacity. I tested mine with h2testw and the capacity was true. A 2tb usb stick reviews will show heaps of 5 star review where people plug the usb stick into a cpmputer and file explorer says "2Tb" and the reviewer takes a photo of that and writes " capacity is real " because they are an idiot. There will also be a bunch of 5 star reviews where people write "transferred 2tb of data to the stick , works well". Or "package received" with a photo of the package showing that it says 2TB , and add to the review "as described". The 1 star reviews will have reviews that state "tested with h2testw and capacity is 12gb" .
Smaller drives - i.e. 256gb and lower are more likely to be genuine capacity IF NOT AT A STUPIDLY PRICE. A $5 for 256gb is fake. $20 could be legit.
Again, check the one star reviews.
I'm amazed a $20 256GB drive passed h2testw! Out of interest, how long did it take and did you heatsink the drive while testing?
Can't remember how long it took , i think it was slow usb3 speed.. Just raw dogged the test from the front usb of my desk top.
Just checked my order history. Bought from the NETAC store 4 years ago for $24 . NETAC are a major memory manufacturer of storage .
64TB no chance
Check if Sandisk etc make 64TB
For $10 I'd expect lucky to get a decent 256GB card.
I have paid like $3 and got a 128GB card (tested and it is right size but probably class 10). You'll definitely get 64GB for $10.
Had 64GB for $10 come and it was a dud aliexpress refunded the money.
Atomic Shrimp released a good video on these scams some time ago. He goes over a lot of scams and also does some limited budget challenges (like only buying the cheapest items from the grocery store for meals) so I reckon he'd be right up OzBargain's alley
The problem is now even worse. SSDs eith invalid function errors that misreport capacity
of course they are fake, no doubt what so ever. The reason they are so cheap is you have a lot of people that don't understand they will be fake and then many others that say "well it is only $10, nothing to lose". $9 profit for them for the piece of garbage they send you.
if they're like the one(s) I bought (two pack) a while back just for yuks, they have a small (mine were about 60MB) cheap microSD card and a little bit of circuitry that 'lies' to the operating system about the capacity available. this allows you to keep writing to the 'disk' without ever actually filling it, and there is no way you're getting all that data back.
I was curious as to what was happening, so was happy to spend the $15 (I think it was, including postage) to get these "massive & cheap" USB drives. they were a bit of a bugger to get open, lots of 'hot glue' making it a pretty solid little package.
so, $15 for two small microSD cards was about the 'right price', but they were a challenge to get to :)
Don't even think of buying them mate. I bought 2 last year. They have some capacity but takes hours to transfer data. To copy even 1GB takes hours. The read and write speed are in bites per hour. So i tried once and gave up.
When i reported they asked to leave a positive review and promised to resend better ones. That explains why they have positive reviews. Don't waste your money. If you want to annoy someone it's a cute little present.
yeah , the old "I checked with the warehouse and they sent the wrong drive, I will now send the correct drive" story.
I wouldn't get one. Could come pre loaded with malware
Yes.
Do not buy. Scammers rely on enough idiots buying and not asking/getting refunds to make a profit. We don't know how the backend works - other than knowing these scams exist, so they ARE making money (there's probably a delay between sale and refund, and the scammers close up shop in the middle)
Like you, many times in the past I've thought "free storage" and bought - they're all scams, and they die very fast.
Even when these drives have some tiny amount of real storage, they typically only last 3 or 6 months before it dies - the reason these are so cheap is they're made from all the reject chips that get taken/sold instead of discarded.
Buy one and report back