Flash Drive Education 101
Posted by KittyFireFlash on October 5, 2008
This article will be revised. It is possible now for 16GB drives to be manufactured in China and some 32GB drives. There have been a few drives investigated that finally are genuine! They are few and are sold at fair prices – not bargain basement.
Before proceeding to Flash Drive Education 101 education and your shopping trip. Please see this new article:
Fake 8GB 16GB 32GB USB Flash Pendrives Drives On eBay YouTube Videos – A Buyer And A Seller Speak
Not one usb flash drive investigated by SOSFakeFlash has delivered a true capacity of more than 8 GB. So far SOSFakeFlash has been concentrating on eBay. Why? It seems to be the largest distribution tunnel of counterfeit USB drives – for internet shopping. eBay has a Global presence – members in many countries. A great place to shop with bargains glore. But when it comes to usb flash drives, it no paradise – it is a nightmare. Honest sellers are buried under the listings for fake drives.
As of 2007 it appears that China did not manufacture chips with a capacity beyond 8GB. To have a 16GB drive you would need two chips working together under a controller chip to present 16GB of space. So for 32 GB, 4 chips would be needed. We at SOSFakeFlash are not chip “experts”, some of us do know a lot about technology – but we are not at that level.
Shenzhen Feetek Electronics Co., Ltd.
Time to visit the main shopping site. Explore, investigate and learn. You might want to book mark this page if you need a break from Flash Drive Education 101.
So what are your thoughts after this shopping adventure? Did you find drive(s) you bought? If so what did the manufactures offer in size? Were the size capacities smaller than the listing of advertised capacity size on eBay? Did your testing with H2testw 1.4 come close to the size the manufactures offered. If so…the question is, WHO TURNED THE INNOCENT DRIVE INTO FRANKENFLASH!
Did you by any chance come across any strange memory offerings such as a range for a drive 128mb to 16GB with the keyword optional? That is an odd word, to use. Since when is memory size optional? Unless…you have to do the reprogramming yourself? It is not clear to us at SOSFakeFlash as to what this means.
Did you see any models offered similar to those on being listed on eBay? The difference being that the drives on eBay advertise a much larger size than what the manufacturers offer?
Did anyone see a manufacture offering a flash drive of more than 8 GB? Let us know? We took the class and in the few hours we spend, we did not find one. Did you find a 16GB or 32GB or 64GB being offered by a manufacturer?
Please feel free to share your thoughts on your “shopping trip” to China with a comment.
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Next lesson in the series is Flash Drive Education 102.
SOSFakeFlash 
Norman Jenkins said
Wish I had been aware of these sites prior to purchase.
mad teacher said
Have been busy with other things so didn’t do a visit to China till now. One thing I particularly noticed in my quick whiz round was the offerings from a company called Shenzhen Topkeen industry Co. Among the pictures of branded drives was what, at first glance, looks exactly like genuine Kingston mini-fun drives.
The capacity of the mini-fun is linked to it’s colour – each colour is for a different capacity. I bought a dozen of the blue 512mb model for beginner IT classes when these first came out. A closer look at the image this company shows of the mini-fun shows that the blue one is marked as 1GB – hmm is this a dodgy company one wonders?
Ed said
Thanks for the education – and scary to see so many positive happy feedbacks left for the frankenflash sellers on ebay by unsuspecting buyers who aren’t even aware what they’ve bought, interspersed with only very few negatives from disappointed buyers who have realised they’ve been conned.
Marek said
I wish I knew this before.
my ebay usb sticks summary:
I have refunded 1 8GB stick (the one with metal clamp)- it couldn’t be used at all, even formatted properly: “formating couldnot be finished”
bricked 2 x 8gb “sony vaio” usb, they worked properly, kept data properly, until after 2 weeks both fcked within 2 days
now i have 1x 16gb usb which is loosing data, and creates weird files that cannnot be deleted becouse of reading error
and also 1x 8gb that is doing the same as 16gb: loosing data, creates corrupted files that cannot be deleted…. I a pretty sure they both will soon be unformattable…
Think i will invest money in one 8gb Kingston becouse i’ve already spent twice as much for the chineese ones
Spread the word, stop the fake flash
kittyfireflash said
We are contacting you. It was the suggestion of one of our readers to put a link at the very top for this education topic. We can see this post is being read a lot.
It is important to know that for major brands, the drive should come sealed in a blister package that requires a fight with sissors to open. This is done to make sure the drives can not be tampered with!
Always consult with the manufacturers site for a flash drive model to make sure that it matches what they make! Saddly the evidence SOSFakeFlash has accumulated is saying only one thing – to buy a flash drive, any flash drive on eBay is NOT ADVISED! Too risky, too many fakes.
But it is best for people to review the evidence which is why we have two mini shopping trip courses for readers to explore so they can make up their own minds on the subject – not just accept our views or evidence.
nembokid said
Hi everybody,
about the production of (possibly) fake flashpen, here many other examples.
If you look into sony website and search for USB flashpen (Micro Vault is the brand name for it) you will not find anything above 16GB.But in this site you may find USB Flash Drive up to 120 GB, you can order it wholesale.What they are?
(http://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/sztopkeen/product-detailwqKxSoecwgkB/China-USB-Flash-Drive-with-32GB-64GB-120GB-S-100-1-.html).Up to few weeks ago were offered on ebay “Sony Vaio” Pen Drive with 120GB capacity (http://cgi.ebay.it/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120314890620&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=002#ebayphotohosting), while the brand Vaio is from Sany reserved to notebook and there is no mention in Sony product list of this type of products.
Third example: I found a 64 GB Sony Flashpen (http://cgi.ebay.it/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190256432484&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:IT:1123) on offer from a vendor not far from where I live:
I contacted the vendor ,supplied info about program to test it. In return I received many thks and the offer was canceled (the vendor tested it and found fake).
Where again this fake Sony 64GB was coming from?The answer I think to these question is always in Shenzhen.
FakeStopper said
Hi Nembokid,
I can’t believe they are putting 120GB, imagine what the buyer will find out when it only 8GB. Yes you riht, Shenzhen in China is a very FAMOUS place for counterfeit. In fact, every where you go in Shenzhen are fakes. There is jus way too many people and corruption that is basically impossible to control. Having said that, Shenzhen is also the place where alot of usb flash drive manufacturer are based.
I can tell you I been doing investigation, and communicating with manufacturer in China over the past few weeks. Alot of manufacturers I contacted are geniune and they are big distributed of usb flash drive around the world. I requested the product info from all of them, and told them about the fake drive issues. What they told me is there is basically no usb flash drive above 16GB in China! NO 16GB!!! They are basically the producer of these memory chip and imagine their answer to me about usb flash drive.
So you can see why those drives above 16GB is highly likely or even to say 100% to be fake.
ano said
I have also bought 256 GB fake sony usb drive in Shenzhen Luo Hu station, first shop in that glass building on the right, when you go from Hong Kong border checkpoint. Besides fake Nokia phones, Iphones, they also sell fake SD cards, I tried to format 8GB Kingston card and it turned out that this card was 4GB only. Seller brought a few more cards, but none of them matched the capacity printed on them.