If you are planning to bid or buy a flash memory product (USB sticks, SD cards, Sony sticks) from eBay or other auction sites, be warned! There are literally thousands of sellers out there selling fakes. Advertised as 16GB or 32GB, their true capacity is actually somewhere between 1 or 2GB. Be specially wary of sellers from Asia (China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc) that sells USB drives. They are priced so low you might be tempted to bid for one.
If you do, test it immediately! One of the software tools that has been around and is very reliable is H2testw v1.4. It was created to specifically test for counterfeit USB drives. At the end of the test it will output the following:
The media is likely to be defective.
1.9 GByte OK (4044672 sectors)
14.0 GByte DATA LOST (29483136 sectors)
Details:14.0 GByte overwritten (29483136 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
0 KByte corrupted (0 sectors)
1 MByte aliased memory (2048 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x000000007b6f0000
Expected: 0x000000007b6f0000
Found: 0x00000003ff260000
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 4.44 MByte/s
Reading speed: 14.3 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4
Make sure you save this output so that you can offer it as proof that the USB you just paid for is a fake. If you bought the item from eBay report it immediately by opening a case against the seller and offer as proof the output from H2testw v1.4. Do not leave a positive/neutral feedback to the seller nor should you return the item to the seller. Otherwise, the seller will just re-list it back on eBay.
For more details head over to SOSFakeFlash.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment