2 TB Flash Drive Scam

[P1LGRIM]

If it seems too good to be true then it probably is.
I saw this listing on eBay a while ago and bought one.
It just arrived and seems to be ok.

 

[trs96]

I really doubt that it can hold 2TB of data as no flash drive exists currently that can do that. I would guess that capacity is either 8 or 16GB at that price. Chinese sellers do this on Amazon too and get away with selling these. Was this seller from China or the UK ?

• Memory: 16GB to 2TB
• Data Saving: 10 years
• Operating System: Windows 98 \ YO \ 2000 \ XP, Linux 2.4.x win7 win8 win10 support 2.0 and down top

Package Include:
1* USB3.0 2TB Flash Drive

Note:

• Please allow minor error due to manual measurement.
• Due to the difference between different monitors, the picture may not reflect the actual color of the item.

Calling it 2TB capacity when it's only 16GB is a "minor" error.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

If it seems too good to be true then it probably is.
I saw this listing on eBay a while ago and bought one.
It just arrived and seems to be ok.

View attachment 443195


View attachment 443196

Indeed, that looks like a bargain. Crazy price. I'm off to take a look

EDIT :

For me it's the token £0.39 postage that tickles. No UK postal service cost that little.

Still a few sellers have them. If it tests Ok that's pretty good.

 

[trs96]

Indeed, that looks like a bargain. Crazy price. I'm off to take a look

It's only a 32GB flash drive so it's not a crazy good deal.

 

[P1LGRIM]

Was this a UK seller or one from China ?

The listing said that the seller is in London but the package arrived with a customs declaration so i'm guessing not.

Currently transferring data to it as a test.

 

[trs96]

If it seems too good to be true then it probably is.

Here's how you can tell the capacity it really has. Start writing large multi GB files to it and see where it stops.

 

[P1LGRIM]

Here's how you can tell the capacity it really has. Start writing large multi GB files to it and see where it stops.

That's what I'm currently doing.

It arrived formatted exFAT so as a first test I reformatted it to HFS+J and it still came up 2.1 TB.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

The listing said that the seller is in London but the package arrived with a customs declaration so i'm guessing not.

Currently transferring data to it as a test.

Yes, as I believe the Chinese government pays the International shipping for all the Shenzen companies, this makes their products seem incredibly cheap.

 

[trs96]

It arrived formatted exFAT so as a first test I reformatted it to HFS+J and it still came up 2.1 TB.

The only way to know the true capacity is to write data to it until it stops. They can make the capacity showing in Disk Utility appear to be any amount they choose.

 

[jaymonkey]

If it seems too good to be true then it probably is. I saw this listing on eBay a while ago and bought one. It just arrived and seems to be ok.

@P1LGRIM,

Like @trs96, I highly doubt that it is actually 2TB.

It is pretty common for rouge Chinese tech shops to tinker with the USB flash firmware so that it reports a larger size than it actually is. I got caught out myself last year when i bought a 5 pack of 16GB USB thumb drives for £12. When they arrived i reformatted them to HFS+ and they all reported 16GB.

But when i used them to create MacOS installers they would never work.

In my case they all turned out to be 4GB drives ...

Sometimes they even make the things cyclic ... meaning once the actual memory size is full it starts writing from the beginning again which makes them look more legit as the file system will not stop writing to them when full.

I seem to remember that fake SanDisk Micro SD cards where investigated last year by the WatchDog TV program, and whilst they all looked the part in all cases there was way less memory than claimed.

Also i don't think it's physically possible to get 2TB of flash memory in to such a small package.

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

Cheers
Jay