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[Varche]

We have been selling(and buying) things over the years on EBay. We have two accounts both with 100% feedback.

In an effort to make a bit of income we decided to buy some stuff in to sell on Spanish Ebay. Looked around and found the perfect job. 128Gb memory sticks.

Bought 17 from Chinese sellers with 100% feedback via an outfit called DHGate.

Tested them by sticking them in your PC and they show 126Gb and you can save files to them and open them. So we listed them on Ebay over a period of time.

Not making a fortune but you would think it was a pleasant way to bolster income in these difficult times.

Wrong. Some buyers have come back and said they are having problems. Files go missing, drive doesn't work after using five or six times, doesn't hold anything like 126 Gb.

I have done a search and have of course come up with the inevitable. They are fake or use substandard substrate or have a sophisticated programme on them that makes an 8 Gb look like a 256Gb.

I have found a programme called H2testw which looks pretty good for telling you more about the guts of each USB stick. I have one on test now. Been running for several hours . Showing up errors etc. Are there  any better tools out there that do the same?

So now we have to spend ages refunding buyers their money, hoping to preserve our 100% good reputation on Ebay and trying to get our money back from China or the intermediary outfit (DHGate) in the USA. Good luck with that I say.

Not looking for sympathy but just letting people know that there are fakes out there. My brother had a few too and his arrived labelled up with premium brand name. He is now also trying to get his money back too.

Anybody want some nice paperweights or decorative USB sticks give me a shout. I could even list them on my newly opened Ebay account of toogoodtobetruesomustbefake Buy It Now! £10   

[zirk]

Do a full fat format, test them, if there 8gb sell them as 8gb and cut your losses..

[Kevin Wood]

Do a full fat format, test them, if there 8gb sell them as 8gb and cut your losses..

Yep, it's so easy to fiddle them to report any size that you like that they now fall into the category of items too risky to deal with on Ebay IMHO. Ebay aren't interested in sorting out problems like this, so best not to touch with a barge pole.

[STMO123]

The site where LD got his mattress, forget the name of it now, were having the same problem. Loads of complaints about USB sticks.

[TheBoy]

Very common. Very very common. In fact, more common than that.

Its not just the no-name shite either, the likes of SANDISK are being cloned, as are MP3 players etc etc.

There are tools out there to test real capacity, not just what the device claims. Format (built into Windows) is not one of them


I running out of breath repeating, but avoid all such shite thats sold on ebay. Buy it locally from a reputatable supplier, and test it.

[TheBoy]

The site where LD got his mattress, forget the name of it now, were having the same problem. Loads of complaints about USB sticks.

I did read the stats the other day in one of the IT retail channel rags, something really shocking like 50% of the flash memory (SD cards, USB etc) are fake. Vast majority of it being supplied originally by Chinese Ebayers. By the time you go to use some of the space thats not really there, all your ebay and paypal rights are gone, and you've already left good feedback...

[D]

Yup, did that 5 years ago. Bought a USB stick off ebay, claimed to be 8GB at that time, registered as 8gb. Except when I tried transferring a movie onto it, it said that it would take 6 years to transfer over. Got a refund pretty quickly from seller.

I suspect they prey on people who will check its working (by transferring a smallish file) and then never test the storage limits of the USB stick.

[Varche]

Here is the test result after about four hours :

The media is likely to be defective.
5.8 GByte OK (12227350 sectors)
119.1 GByte DATA LOST (249879786 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
119.1 GByte corrupted (249879786 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x00000000b5aa4000
Expected: 0x00000000b5aa4000
Found: 0x0408000495aa4000
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 19.6 MByte/s
Reading speed: 9.42 MByte/s

[Rog]

Do a full fat format, test them, if there 8gb sell them as 8gb and cut your losses..

Not sure about this. Isn't there a 4Gb size recognition limit on FAT32 ? Not sure, but there is a limit

But you know what . . . 128Gb on a flash drive. Why ? I use flash drives a lot for work. Transfering stuff from old drives to new, backups etc. If I need anything like that capacity I use a proper external drive. Anything else is too slow.

[dbdb]

h2testw is the gold standard, and its free, why look for anything else?

If you put some effort in they can sometimes be repaired to their original true size (prob 8GB in your case), I've done this when the fake memory had something useful attached that I wanted to use like a camera.  You will need to download some dodgy looking software - usually not worth the risk and anyway often doesn't work - I have a fake 32GB toshiba stick in front of me, came in a sealed convincing toshiba blister pack, cannot be repaired.  Ebay will give you a refund if you hassle them though they may not take kindly to you re-selling them.  You don't have to send them back before a refund h2testw is totally reliable and ebay know that (above their 2nd line support).