How to avoid buying a fake USB data stick / thumb drive | Buying

ypdc_dennis · 2025-05-23T23:43:13.546000Z

16TB and 8TB USB data sticks are ALL fakes.At this point in 2025 the largest USB data stick available is 4TB (and only one company is making it). Any Seller trying to sell these sticks are either trying to deliberately scam you or are not paying any attention to the quality of the products they are trying to move. In either case, best to ignore anything they are trying to sell. * Fake name: Selling a data stick with a company name -- check to make sure the company actually makes USB data sticks -- Lenovo for example does not. * Slow speed USB 2 -- avoid any sizes bigger than 128gig because they are probably fake (USB3 is the minimum useful speed for larger data sticks). * Does the data stick come with retail packaging? It may be legit data stick without, but no guarantee that it's not a factory second. * On eBay you can check the seller's feedback -- there may be some clues (especially if you switch to Classic view and can focus on negative and neutral feedback) ... How the scam works: A USB data stick has a controller chip and memory. The computer does not access the memory directly, it goes through the controller chip. The scammer modifies the controller chip to claim there is much more memory than the actual memory chip can store. Once you try to store more data than the chip can hold you start losing data as the controller will start overwriting previously stored data. Many buyers will assume it was just a stick going bad, rather than realize that they were scammed. And it can take years for them to discover this. Lots of youtube videos out there about these scams (including ways to check for fake speeds and fake storage). -;-

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How to avoid buying a fake USB data stick / thumb drive | Buying | eBay Canada EN