Is your USB drive fake?

[George K]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-freeware-detects-fake-usb-drives-with-inflated-capacity

Veteran US software engineer and security researcher Steve Gibson has announced a new drive tool from Gibson Research Corporation (GRC). The underlying purpose of ValiDrive v1.0 is to “spot-check any USB mass storage drive for fraudulently missing storage,” which has become ever more important given the influx of fake drives flooding online retailers. This freeware tool also checks any USB-connected drive for read / write errors.

Dirty dozen fake flash storage drives, bought from Amazon last month (Image credit: GRC)
In case it isn’t clear from your own experience of buying discount USB drives why it will be useful, Gibson reveals that he bought 12 drives from Amazon in the last month, and ValiDrive proved that “every single one of them was a bogus fraudulent drive.” See the image above for the motley collection of deceitful drives that can be picked up from one of the world’s biggest online marketplaces.

Also, fake External M.2 NVMe SSD:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/low-performance-external-m2-nvme-ssd-found-to-have-microsd-cards-inside

And fake internal SSDs:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/fake-samsung-980-pro

[Horace]

Dodged a bullet. Got two 990 pros recently.