On Sun, 28 May 2023 00:37:28 -0700 Keith Lofstrom <kei...@kl-ic.com> dijo:
>I bought a "PNY 16GB Attaché 3 USB 2.0 Flash Drive 10-Pack" >from Amazon for $27.98, to transfer files from some ancient >CentOS machines to replacement Debian machines. > >The four I've tested so far format to more than 30GB (!!!) >of ext3 file systems. Hard to believe, so I read/write- >tested two of them with random patterns for a few days. >No bits lost. In the past I've bought USB drives advertised as 1TB that appeared in GUI file browsers as 1TB, but which could not take more than 32GB of data. The end of the story is that they were really 32GB drives that evildoers in China had hacked to make them appear as 1TB drives. If you bring up a selection of 1TB drives on eBay you will find many at the beginning of the list priced at around $16, and I can guarantee you that every one has been similarly hacked. Then there will be a big empty space in the listings, followed by more 1TB drives at the $100+ price. And it's not just eBay; I find the same thing at Amazon and Newegg, although responsible vendors at least try to hold the bad guys at bay. And if you want to buy a 1TB SD card you'll find that the same thing is happening. And one more point - the hacked ones were originally 32GB (usually), and many were name brands like PNY, Kingston, etc; in other words, the seller bought a big batch of 32GB name brand drives, then hacked them to sell them as 1TB drives, so you can't assume that if it has a name brand on the case it is really as big as the seller claims. And one final point, in US law the principle of 'let the buyer beware' (caveat emptor) hasn't been true since I was a child; nowadays it has become discloseat vendor (apologies to ancient Romans). Unfortunately, Chinese law imposes little or no penalty for fraud, and ditto for many other countries, and even if what the seller does is really illegal, good luck finding the seller and serving them with legal process. I do not understand how the hackers accomplish their machinations, nor do I know how to undo the hack. But I do have abundant knowledge of what a dollar should buy, and I am certain as to how many of them are in my bank account. This gives me one sure way to tell if a drive is real; just go to (e.g.) pny.com and see what they charge for a drive of the size you want to buy, and if your vendor is selling a drive of that capacity for a fraction of the price, give it a pass. The above is not directly on point to Keith's plaint, but it is related and may be useful.
