PEN DRIVE FRAUD ALERT: VERIFY YOUR USB STORAGE WITH THESE TESTS

Flash media (Storage devices that use flash memory) has been around for a while and has been the favorable medium for transferring data. While the older versions of flash media were at most genuine, the recent Ghanaian market has been flooded with tons of fake and fraudulently manufactured flash drives (pen drives and memory cards).

pen drives in Ghana

This has been the modus operandi of some overseas manufacturers with most encounters from China( where we ship most of the tested flash drives). In Ghana, the common dealers of flash memory devices are the petty traders commonly referred to as “Abotsi” (Malian, Burkinabe, or Nigerien) retailing small commodities usually by hawking. They are the main retailers of most petty Chinese–made goods in Ghana. They end up in the "cycle of sales" as innocent victims of a fraud scheme, without knowing the details of the products they sell.

1. PEN DRIVE STORAGE CAPACITY EXPLAINED 

In computing, 1024 MB (Megabyte) units of storage quantity is equal to 1 Gigabyte (1GB), while 1024 units of storage quantity is quantified as 1 Terabyte (1TB), the measuring scheme continues into Yottabytes and beyond.  The catch is when you purchase a 1GB pen drive or Memory card, do not expect to see its exact registered capacity as 1GB when checking the total registered capacity on a computer or Mobile phone. This is so because part of the 1024 MB capacity will be used to store firmware (software that is written to a hardware device) and other important information about the device. This firmware and other important information helps the pen drive to be recognized when connected to devices like computers, mobile phones, etc. Without this firmware, it will be impossible for the pen drive to get connected or establish communication with other devices, and that results in a slight deviation and reduction of the real indicated capacity of the drive. Hence a 1GB pen drive will be registered with a capacity of 812MB when connected to a computer. This doesn’t make the pen drive fake or substandard.

32GB Pen drive displaying 29.2GB useable space
source: photo file

2. HOW DEFECTIVE PEN DRIVES BEHAVE

Back in the day, we determined fake pen drives when they failed to establish a connection with a device. Fake pen drives simply refuse the connection by displaying an error message.

A possibly corrupt pend drive displaying an error message 

Some also become inaccessible due to corruption, they also throw an error message to alert a user, hence the user detecting that the pen drive is faulty. Others will work for a few weeks then give up the ghost! It was not so difficult to detect a defective pen drive though the challenge was the duration between the time of purchase and the time of use. Yet these fake pen drives were still not that common on the market.

formatting pen drives

3. THE MOST COMMON FLASH DRIVES

Until recently, the above explanation was how defective pen drives were determined as fake. But with the introduction of large-capacity SSDs (Solid State Drives, note: pen drives are also in this family) came a freshly masterminded scam!

So, there are 3 main common classes of flash media:

• SSD
• PEN DRIVES
• MEMORY CARDS

SSD

The important area to note is that, with these technologies, the size factors the price. SSDs are quite sizeable so they can easily have capacities that run into Terabytes, Petabytes, and Exabytes (as of the writing of this article). 

SSD
By Jacek Halicki - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133700064

PEN DRIVES

Pen drives on the other hand are quite smaller and their price margin increases with the capacity. This means the larger the capacity, the more expensive it will be! 

A pen drive by Philips
source: https://lovecrewar.best/product_details/23241544.html 

MEMORY CARD 

The same applies to Memory cards which are even smaller and more pricey!

 32GB Sandisk Memory Card 

 4. THE SCAM

I became a victim of this scam on a few occasions, so I took it upon myself to investigate further and to my surprise, the problem was far bigger than I imagined. It was worldwide!

The scam includes retailers advertising huge capacity flash drives with what seem to be genuine capacity readings but are fake. The manufacturers use fake chips to lure buyers to think they are buying original products. They use smart software to burn fake capacity readings into these drives.

What they do, is to take a 64GB flash drive and then cunningly add a fake capacity reading of 1Terabyte information to it. When the defective drives are connected to other devices, they display a false capacity reading, making them appear genuine to the user. The flaw can only be detected when a user attempts to copy a file bigger than the original real hidden capacity of the drive (in this case 64GB). What transpires will lead to an unforeseen data loss! You have a flash drive indicating a capacity of 1TB and when you copy data to it, you will lose over 400GB because, in reality, the real capacity of the drive is 512GB. This is a perfect scam that is very difficult to detect and tackle. 

This fraud is so common that, it's scary to purchase a pen drive in Ghana especially from places like Circle, Ashaiman, etc., or from any "abotsi" where you may not have any warranty protecting your transaction. Once in a while, these fake pen drives even find their way into the outlets of renowned vendors.

5. AVOIDING THE SCAM

There are a few freeware (free software) that can be used to test flash drives after purchase.

They "stress-test" every cluster on the flash drives to check its validity, others even include read/write speed tests and drive mapping options. To avoid being victimized, it is advisable to do the following:

a) Always buy flash media or pen drives from authentic and trusted vendors/retailers that may include a warranty offer.

b) Let the price be your guide. When it comes to flash drives, the cheaper the drive, the more likely it will end up fake.

c) Test your drive after purchase to be sure of its quality. Here are links to a few freeware and shareware you can download to test flash drives after purchase;

• CHECK FLASH: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/check_flash.html

source: majorgeeks.com

• FAKEFLASHTEST(by RMPrepUSB) : https://rmprepusb.com/tutorials/007-all-about-fake-sd-cards-and-usb-flash-drives/

https://rmprepusb.com

There is a p video tutorial on how to use this tool from the link above

• USB FLASH DRIVE TESTER: https://www.vconsole.com/download

source:https://www.geckoandfly.com

These tools are available online for free and also quite easy to use. The only caveat is, that it takes hours without interruption to complete a successful test especially if the flash drive is more than 64GB. 

CASE STUDY 

One of the major hotspots for most of these "capacity-fraud" sellers is AliExpress, they use the platform to dupe unsuspecting victims. Yet the sweet deal is, if you can prove to AliExpress that the device is defective, you can have a refund and the supplier may face some form of penalty!

I bought a 2TB portable SSD from AliExpress somewhere in 2022, it turned out to be fake after a test. Only 128GB of clusters were valid, the remaining was defective. Below is the image: 

Fake portable 2TB SSB
source: file photo

One example of a fake pen drive that flooded the Ghanaian market was this imitated Toshiba type. 

Due to the cheap price, a lot of people fell for this scam and purchased them. I tried 2 of them from different sources just to prove and they all failed the test.

Imitated Pen drives in Ghana
source: file photo

More than ever, "capacity fraud" is still in play on most major websites and it is also available offline. Below is another imitation from another website.

Common sense should tell one that, a genuine 2T SSD will cost more than GHS52 in Ghana or elsewhere in equivalence. Moreover, a pen drive from the perspective of technology and form factor (size), will be quite costive at such capacity!

This information is enough to guide and keep one safe when purchasing a flash drive in Ghana. Remember to buy from a genuine vendor with a possible warranty. Always test with relevant software for authenticity.