I bought a (little too) cheap large SSD off the internet. It was surprisingly slow, but it seemed to work fine, so I assumed that's the reason for the low price - until I tried to backup my other SSD on it. After the first ~50 GiB, all the writes suddenly failed and I could only perform reads.
After re-formatting it and attempting the backup a few more times, I was frustrated, so I searched the internet for related problems and found out about these so-called "chinese scam drives" that announce size to the drivers that is much larger than actual, and just throw away any writes above some memory address.
I quickly found f3 and tested it - and sure enough, it was a chinese scam drive. I reported the seller to the local inspection and they confiscated all the other drives and gave them a huge fine. I feel pretty smug about it.
Had a similar experience with a friend's "10 TB" SSD. After I tested it with f3 and confirmed it was fake, I opened the case and found a 64 GB microSD card and an adapter/faker board.
Not op, but if someone is advertising X (eg. 10tb o space), and the reality is Y (not 10tb of space), you can call "trades inspection" (Tržna inšpekcija), and they can issue fines, etc.
Just received 2 cheapo 64GB micro sd cards from aliexpress, they seemed legit, had tons of reviews with OK crystaldisk performance screenshots and... they're junk
This tool quickly identified that they were counterfeit of type "Limbo", with 16GB of capacity instead of 64GB.
Thanks to Michel Machado for writing this gem.
A part of me will see stuff like "3TB Flash Drive" on AliExpress for $3 and briefly consider buying it. Like, I know it's obviously not true, it's obviously a lie, but I also am curious about what I would actually get.
I never do it because I don't really see the point of paying money for something that will immediately go into a landfill, but it's always tempting.
Description:
This item is upgraded by 32 GB Pen Flash Drive to 2TB
32GB-2TB, the actual capacity is 32G, the computer displays 2TB, the detection is also 2TB, more than 32G things can be stored, but not displayed.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/234810575961
That's not bad. Most counterfeits I get are just 2GB so hardly useful. Still, the counterfeit firmware makes compatibility issues more likely, so better to buy one without the counterfeiting.
And there's honest stuff on there too, loads of it actually. I bought a 128GB SSD from there many years ago for $10. I expected nothing but like you say, I was curious about what I'd get and something faster than a shitty USB stick with decent storage capacity was all I was after. I verified it, and it works perfectly and it's 128GB as described, it just lacks cache so it bogs down on super large files. But for $10 I couldn't buy a better USB stick.
For consumer stuff like this, you'll obviously get something else. But sometimes you can get recycled components if the price obviously is not sane, where recycling is an option.
It's only fraud if the description mentions new and original. :)
Back when it was being done with external hard drives there were YouTube channels dedicated to breaking them open and experimenting with how they did it.
I did this on Amazon knowing it was a scam and immediately returned it just to drive up their numbers and hopefully get them shut down faster. I have no idea if that did any good, but what disappointed me was Amazon only gave me credit, not a full refund.
Yeah, really... I picked up a 128GiB card from the store on something of a whim a while back, and I'm not even sure I paid more than about $18USD (with tax) for it. I bet I could have gotten it cheaper, but I was impatient.
A helpful tool I recommend for buying from common outlets online is Fakespot [1]. It scans the reviews and looks for suspicious/fake reviews & other telltale signs of deceit. Mozilla recently acquired it, but you can scan Amazon URLs on their website, and they have a very helpful browser addon. There was a similar tool I used to double check called ReviewMeta, but they seem to be offline.
It's not a 100% foolproof way to determine if a vendor or product is fake, but it is helpful. There are some other things you can do to double check things as well. [2]
I've bought a couple things from Aliexpress, and payment processing is such a hassle[1], I don't know why you would use it to buy things that are easily found from domestic sources? Especially SD cards which are widely counterfeited.
[1] This was a couple years ago, maybe things got streamlined? Of my cards that don't have a foreign transaction fee, Aliexpress wants the phone number off the back of one, which is sketchy; no thanks. The second one, charges don't go through, and the issuer customer service can't even see the attempts; I have to ask them to disable security on my card for ~ 30 minutes, and then the charges go through. Billing showed from England, IIRC. Doesn't (edit: Didn't! thanks) support any intermediates I do (paypal/amazon pay) which is usually my goto for low trust transactions.
They do support PayPal nowadays. Paying on AliExpress is as easy as on Amazon, and a lot of things do have a 5 day delivery guarantee and it does actually work. I've been using it quite a lot personally(I'm in the UK).
This tool could save you from corrupting data but once you buy these counterfeit cards you're better off trashing them than requesting a refund, shipping will cost you more that the drive itself.
You don't need to ship them back. Aliexpress will fully refund fakes, if you send something resembling proof. I got refunds for even obscure stuff like opamps, transistors, etc., with just a quick video of a oscilloscope output.
Sometimes it's trivial to prove, like CMOS opamp with +6V absolute max Vcc supply happily working at +40V.
For anyone looking for tools that do this, it seems like a good opportunity to mention Steve Gibson’s Validrive tool [0] if anyone out there is trying to help family and friends who might be scared off by a CLI tool, and I believe it’s non-destructive.
I’m glad to see more awareness of this issue and entrants into the space.
It warms my heart to see that Steve's website appears frozen in time (and works just fine). I bought Spinrite nearly two decades ago and it saved my bacon more than once. Also loved to listen to him and Leo on Security Now in the very early days of podcasts ("netcasts" lol).
Security Now is still going strong and I listen weekly! And Steve recently committed to continuing past 1000 episodes (he was previously planning to wind things down).
He’s continuing to do awesome work and I deeply appreciate him for it.
Steve is an interesting guy and while his website and software development methods are downright ancient, I would trust his programs over almost any other vendor. SpinRite has saved me also.
I'd encourage anyone who isn't familiar with him to check out the Security Now podcast. I have been listening since 2005.
Well yeah, if you take a look at the "group photo" (https://www.grc.com/validrive/drives.jpg), you can see that all of them are either no-name, have "brands" like "Blanbok+" and "Dianww", and one of them is even a borderline counterfeit SanDisk product (the SD card). I suspect that if he had bought a (non-counterfeit) product from brands such as Kingston or SanDisk, he would have got the actual advertised capacity (although probably not as cheaply).
Really? You were surprised? Something too good to be true actually turned out not to be true? From Amazon no less? I'm guessing you forgot the /s at the end of your comment
The tool brings a huge problem.
You need to buy one to know it is fake, thus making the counterfeiter efforts successful.
Bad product reviews on the sales site won't work as they can be easily circumvented if not removed.
Bad product reviews on 3rd party web site won't be effective as well.
I think the right tool is a website to show updated buck/TB prices. So we can avoid buying fake devices.
The proem is how/who would keep those data up to date.
And how to make that site a popular choice for buyers.
> Because of the very good consumer protection laws we have here, I got my money back.
Sometimes a scammer will give money back easily just to avoid a negative review, irrespective of local consumer protections or lack thereof, if they have currently managed to maintain a good rep (via exchanging good reviews with buyers who haven't tested the item yet, or have passed it on as a present and never will test it, from fake reviews, managing to get negative reviews cancelled the harder way, and other trickery).
This is generally good advice, but the sophistication over the years of some of the fake Sandisk stuff as one example has meant at times even seemingly sound storefronts have become polluted with fakes.
I imagine all sorts of random commingling type activities have happened in Amazon warehouses over the years, there is so many avenues for convincing fake crap to accidentally get sold in mainstream sales channels.
I don't have a link, but I thought I saw that this was happening with name brand drives from third party sellers on Amazon as well. And given that Amazon co-mingles product, it's a crapshoot.
reputable does not mean amazon. they hide random sellers on some products and lie they are from the oem on the product page.
half of premium kingston models I got from the did not fall under the obvious and amateur scam this tool detects... but were lower quality chips or outright QA failed units. that half always fails around the 3x capacity writes. so infuriating.
I got a few new USB drives at work for testing data centre hardwares. I normally would run f3 on new flash drives but this time the deadline is so rushed so I skipped that. Then I wasted an hour diagnosing a mysterious problem, and eventually I found out the usb drive is faulty after testing it using f3.
I then tested all of them and found out 4 out of 8 of them aren’t faulty, some of them died and disappeared.
So test your hardwares, test your hardwares that’s used to test hardwares. You will never know you can trust them unless proven.
Edit: badblocks, SMART test, memtest86 and memtest86+, prime95, Intel burn test, OCCT, iperf3, etc are equally useful.
Readit News
After re-formatting it and attempting the backup a few more times, I was frustrated, so I searched the internet for related problems and found out about these so-called "chinese scam drives" that announce size to the drivers that is much larger than actual, and just throw away any writes above some memory address.
I quickly found f3 and tested it - and sure enough, it was a chinese scam drive. I reported the seller to the local inspection and they confiscated all the other drives and gave them a huge fine. I feel pretty smug about it.
I never do it because I don't really see the point of paying money for something that will immediately go into a landfill, but it's always tempting.
It's only fraud if the description mentions new and original. :)
Fun stuff to watch on a boring afternoon.
TLC flash is currently less than $0.10/GB. $3 will probably get you a 32GB drive with flash of dubious quality.
Select the 1-star reviews. Usually someone helpfully posts proof of the scam.
It's not a 100% foolproof way to determine if a vendor or product is fake, but it is helpful. There are some other things you can do to double check things as well. [2]
[1] https://www.fakespot.com/
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-spot-fake-reviews-amazon/
[1] This was a couple years ago, maybe things got streamlined? Of my cards that don't have a foreign transaction fee, Aliexpress wants the phone number off the back of one, which is sketchy; no thanks. The second one, charges don't go through, and the issuer customer service can't even see the attempts; I have to ask them to disable security on my card for ~ 30 minutes, and then the charges go through. Billing showed from England, IIRC. Doesn't (edit: Didn't! thanks) support any intermediates I do (paypal/amazon pay) which is usually my goto for low trust transactions.
I entered my card number with them years ago and it just works.
What I hate is their login and search - both horribly broken.
But as to why, it's a better selection than Amazon for many things (for example components) and usually cheaper.
Sometimes it's trivial to prove, like CMOS opamp with +6V absolute max Vcc supply happily working at +40V.
I’m glad to see more awareness of this issue and entrants into the space.
- https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm
He’s continuing to do awesome work and I deeply appreciate him for it.
Another tool for testing flash drives that was recommended to me was H2testW.
Bad product reviews on the sales site won't work as they can be easily circumvented if not removed.
Bad product reviews on 3rd party web site won't be effective as well.
I think the right tool is a website to show updated buck/TB prices. So we can avoid buying fake devices. The proem is how/who would keep those data up to date. And how to make that site a popular choice for buyers.
Deleted Comment
After I tried to store more and ran into issues, I did some investigation and found out that it was a counterfeit Sandisk.
I emailed a screenshot with proof to the seller. Because of the very good consumer protection laws we have here, I got my money back.
Sometimes a scammer will give money back easily just to avoid a negative review, irrespective of local consumer protections or lack thereof, if they have currently managed to maintain a good rep (via exchanging good reviews with buyers who haven't tested the item yet, or have passed it on as a present and never will test it, from fake reviews, managing to get negative reviews cancelled the harder way, and other trickery).
Buy name-brand storage from reputable sellers.
Of course the fantastically cheap stuff on Alibaba is fake. You don't even have to check.
I imagine all sorts of random commingling type activities have happened in Amazon warehouses over the years, there is so many avenues for convincing fake crap to accidentally get sold in mainstream sales channels.
half of premium kingston models I got from the did not fall under the obvious and amateur scam this tool detects... but were lower quality chips or outright QA failed units. that half always fails around the 3x capacity writes. so infuriating.
I then tested all of them and found out 4 out of 8 of them aren’t faulty, some of them died and disappeared.
So test your hardwares, test your hardwares that’s used to test hardwares. You will never know you can trust them unless proven.
Edit: badblocks, SMART test, memtest86 and memtest86+, prime95, Intel burn test, OCCT, iperf3, etc are equally useful.