1TB Thumb drive for $13? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 08:29:13 am
content: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2015-Wholesale-Rotating-stainless-steel-metal-1TB-pen-drive-usb-stick-7-colors-usb-flash-drive/32273149434.htmlI don't get it, $13 and people are giving good feedback saying it's a real 1TB drive.I'm so tempted just to find out!

author: 8086
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 08:39:53 am
content: Let's face it, it's not 1TB.They just spoof the capacity so it shows as 976GB to the PC.If you write that much to it, either you will only have the last 2/4/8GB of what was written, or you'll have the first 2/4/8GB and nothing after that.

author: orbiter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 08:40:13 am
content: I read 3 reviews claiming that the drives were far from the described 1TB, and that the data transfer speeds were incredibly slow. I certainly wouldn't take a chance on those. They look, sound and smell like crap to me.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 08:42:17 am
content: Rule number one when purchasing goods from China, if something looks too good to be true then it probably is.They will have taken a lower capacity thumb drive (say 16Gb) and hacked the firmware to report 1Tb. Download the first 16 Gb and you will be fine, anything more than this and it will overwrite your existing files with the new items. Buy a 1Tb thumb drive from Amazon and you will pay just under a thousand US Dollars, this is a unit manufactured by Kingston rather than an unknown Chinese manufacturer.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 08:45:08 am
content: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2015-Real-capacity-Rotating-metal-usb-flash-drive-2TB-1pcs-512gb-4pcs-stainless-steel-U-disk/32271058107.htmlHere's another one for $11 but I didn't see it before I bought the first one.I went ahead and bought one (from the first seller) just to see. I'll just file a complaint if it doesn't work and get my money back.I've got enough data to fill it to test it out.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 08:46:22 am
content: http://kukuruku.co/hub/diy/usb-killer

author: Fred27
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 08:48:36 am
content: Why do people waste time and money "just to check" that they'll be ripped off?

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 08:57:40 am
content: Quote from: Fred27 on March 10, 2015, 08:48:36 am$13 bucks on my credit card. I'll never miss it.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 09:32:04 am
content: They could be something like 16 GB or even less. When you try to write more data it appears to write normally. However in reality previous data stored gets overwritten. It looks all OK unless you try to read the data back.

author: bookaboo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 10:04:48 am
content: and/or it only writes once or twice and cant be rewritten.

author: Wilksey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 11:32:06 am
content: Well it does say "full refund" if item not as described, depends how persistent you are!

author: electr_peter
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 01:59:30 pm
content: Fantastic device - it includes both FLASH and WOM memory technologies to increase memory capacity. An innovation!

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 02:11:45 pm
content: Regardless of the manufacturer, i would be very caucious using high capacity thumb drives and would not use for backing up critical data. I' ve seen enough thumb drives corrupting data when plugged/unplugged. Yes you always should power the usb drive off but guess what, not all computers actually shut off the usb power, you can say by looking at the LED light that some thumb drives have. That means you insert/remove right into the hot power rail and that may corrupt the data on the drive. If the data was important, you are tosted.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 02:30:35 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on March 10, 2015, 02:11:45 pmThey don't need to and they leave the USB power on when you put a machine into a sleep or hibernation mode, not when you shut the computer down.There's no need to power off the device before you unplug it if you're using devices that actually meet the standards. It's not unplugging the flash drive when it's powered that's corrupting the data, it's unplugging a flash drive that is actively been written to for some reason. So just remember to unmount any partitions mounted read/write and (to be extra safe) wait 10 seconds after the computer tells you it's safe to remove before you do.And really, what is a more reliable while actually been useful way of storing/backing up data than solid state storage?

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 02:48:10 pm
content: A word of advice........ do not connect that thumb drive to a PC that contains anything 'interesting' or valuable (not even once for a few seconds). I will not say more but just a friendly word of warningAurora

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 02:54:47 pm
content: 1TB of flash costs far more than $13.That price will get you 128Gb (not GB) of bare MLC NAND flash.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 07:25:07 pm
content: If it came with more than 128k of flash it would be a lot. Easy to write a fake size into the controller, and simply have enough flash to have a basic FAT32 file system start that cam be read and written to with a FAT and little space after that, with writes after that simply being ignored or cycled over the same small area left in the flash.

author: Phaedrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 07:28:21 pm
content: New spin on an old scam:

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 07:55:11 pm
content: I tend to use them a lot for just back and forth and live Linux devices.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2015, 10:37:42 pm
content: Quote from: Aurora on March 10, 2015, 02:48:10 pmI'm not sure you need to be cagey about the dangers posed by random thumb drives as many are well documentedhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/2460540/most-usb-thumb-drives-can-be-reprogrammed-to-silently-infect-computers.html

author: richms
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2015, 06:25:46 am
content: Cheap thumb drives are also exceptionally slow.When a speedy sandisk ultra is about a buck a gig in 32 and 64 sizes I dont see the value in messing about with these cheap tiny capacity drives, particually ones that are designed to be outright lies. Probably have the lowest quality flash chip and a controller of questionable quality and get a staggering write speed in the low single digits.My time when I want to fill the drive is worth more than the few cents a gig saving of going cheap.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2015, 12:14:48 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on March 10, 2015, 02:58:25 pmI haven't had a SATA hdd last more than a year for some strange reason, never had a flash drive fail on me.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2015, 12:17:15 pm
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on March 11, 2015, 12:14:48 pmWell, that explains your nick.I have one which has been spinning for 7 years.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2015, 12:32:24 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on March 11, 2015, 12:17:15 pmI used to have a thing for building Heath Robinson machines which turned into an obsession with mechanical/electromechanical computers...QuoteI've a few IDE drives still going strong to this day. We don't have the best power supply around here though and voltage dips happen multiple times a day. I think that either SATA itself or just the higher density drives aren't as tolerant to being unceremoniously powered down. Planning on getting another to try out now I have a sort of UPS set up lol.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2015, 02:03:45 pm
content: So the item arrived. It did "appear" to be 1TB in windows, so decided to try to copy 50GB to it which would pretty much eliminate most scammed sizes.It was glacially slow, alternating between 1 and 2 MB/s. Time to test would have been about 18 hours it estimated or something like that. So I let it run for a little bit until I got tired of waiting and cancelled it. I found a utility that supposedly can read the controller firmware on the board and determine the flash chip and sure enough, it said it was reasonably sure there was a Toshiba 8GB flash onboard.So I filed an Aliexpress dispute with my test results and a screenshot and the seller immediately approved my full refund without returning it.Interestingly they included some freebies with the initial shipment.1. USB MicroSD card reader (made of the cheapest plastic you can imagine)2. Some unknown plastic thing that hinges. The only thing I can liken it to is it resembles a very small audio tape splicing device but has no blade in it.3. A plastic fish skeleton4. A 2 inch capacitive touch stylus with a paper thin tip on it.Once I figure out how to get the thumb drive open (It's in an anodized aluminum extruded case) I'll post pictures.Which got me thinking that might make an interesting youtube channel. Purposely buying cheap scam items from China, and requesting a refund right away once you prove they are a scam. Then reviewing/tearing down the said item. Somewhat like Julian Illet does but, in his case I think he actually wants the item to work.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2015, 08:38:38 pm
content: Quote from: Stonent on March 26, 2015, 02:03:45 pmYES, I would watch the shit out of this

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2015, 09:41:04 pm
content: Quote from: Stonent on March 26, 2015, 02:03:45 pm1 is not so surprising, 2 sounds like a spacer attachment for the card reader, to read possibly other formats (posting pictures could help.) 4 might be useful, and I have no clue why they'd send 3.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2015, 10:25:54 pm
content: QuoteIt's a gift, so they can write "gift" on the cn22

author: electr_peter
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 27, 2015, 07:56:35 am
content: Quote from: Stonent on March 26, 2015, 02:03:45 pmQuote from: amyk on March 26, 2015, 09:41:04 pmBuy more and collect them all