Next video: I got sued by 1TB flash drive makers

The human eye can't even see more than 24gb flashdrives.

"I just transfer another one to make sure this isn't a fluke.." Lockpicking lawyer vibes here.. 👌

My friend actually fell for it a while ago... I told him...

There's whole Facebook and WhatsApp groups where Amazon sellers from China pay for reviews. It's crazy.

Amazon, a tech company that lets this happen, makes me wanna re-think my membership

Font used for that "1000GB" label was a red flag/dealbreaker for me lol

A very long while ago (when having an external Samsung 60GB was da bomb), there was a heavy influx of fake USB thumbdrives with capacities rivaling those external drives. At that time, there was a webpage called the FrankenFlash Project where the author warned people of sites like Amazon selling those fake USBs and to download the H2Testw program to verify authenticity and capacity. The more things change, the more they stay the same and the people just don't learn...

I just wanted to comment saying that your wedding band is dope as hell.

I was waiting the whole time if he was gonna explain how scammers make it appear to have 1tb and show the actual capacity but he never did :(

That candle review🤣 All jokes aside, this is terrible. Imagine if someone who isn't aware writes irreplaceable pictures, videos, etc. to this drive and loses them forever.

I got fooled by one of these drives as well. A lesson learned, and I'm glad this video exists to warn others. A name brand drive with less space might cost a bit more, but at least it'll actually work.

Thank you for this video. I wish I had seen this before. I bought that gray one that says “1000 GB” and exactly what you’ve shown is what’s happened. Everything I transfer on to it now is “corrupted” and “unplayable.”

The worst thing is people could actually loose alot of irreplaceable data, what a shitty thing to do to someone

They reprogram the controller, if you find out what the controller is and true capacity, you can sometimes reflash it to the actual capacity and reliably use it.

Was looking for some cheap flash drives laughed out loud when I saw those 1TB drives for £11, so this is still happening. That's how I ended up here.

Gotta love how the first 2Tb drive you showed the listing for said the interface was “USB 2.0” which is amazing that they could find a way to keep that relevance shining brightly with the futuristic product they are selling! Winner, winner... whatever!

The scary thing is that it's plausible enough to make people think it's a dud unit, so perhaps after failing to get a free replacement, they might just go ahead and buy another one.

What is amazing is that I made like 4 reviews on Amazon and they blocked me, and there are people doing crappy reviews like these ones and they are also messing things up mixing several countries reviews

Some time ago, I got a couple of "32GB" flash sticks from one of those scammers. Price vs size was somewhat plausible. What I got was the usual scam with fake 1TB even if I ordered "small" drives instead. Directly to the garbage bin.

Hey, its right up there with that spoiler I saw that adds 100hp. racing stickers that add 5hp a piece.

What's interesting is that all these fake drives are solid metal which 1. Looks expensive and 2. Makes it hard to actually physically examine the drive and check how many chips are hidden within.

Another thing to keep in mind when you are buying usb drives from no name manufactures is it may be more than a thumb drive, it could be a ducky that deploys malware onto your system once you plug it in. As a side note NEVER use random flash drives you randomly find because of this very reason.

I bought two 2tb usb drive for $15 each and did the same test as you. The packaging was so cheap that I knew it wasn’t genuine. It was so slow that I gave up transferring some files. I decided to reformat it and check the settings again. It did not read at all. Return both of them back to Amazon. For any external drives or flash drives, you should only buy name brand companies.

The scammers buy someone's small Amazon seller business in another country (in this case, someone who makes custom candles) then use the purchased business' existing amazon product ID's by editing them to be for these fake 1T or 2T USB flash drives and changing the product id's country code. Amazon needs to use some sort of algorithm that detects some substantial change to the text of a product's name and/or description. Flag it for human review of the previous text vs the altered text from x period ago.

i don't understand how people still fall for this crap and that stores like amazon still sell them. "marketplace" sellers are a plague. i hate when listings are completely changed to different products like this many times i have gone back in my order history and seen how wildly different sketchy items are now in the list then what i ordered

Friend of mine was so pleased with himself when he purchased a 2TB drive for 50 USD from Wish, I told him he got ripped off and that it either had nowhere near that amount of space or there would be something else wrong with it. The next day he told me I was right, he had tried to copy a 10GB file and it estimated completion in eight hours.

Thanks for this video. I recently bought two "2TB" USB drives from Amazon, neither of which worked. The second one was the one you showed that's gray in color and has SD card reviews on Amazon. I don't know why I thought such a cheap drive would work. Both went back to Amazon and I got my money refunded.

That is a 1 TB drive, you just didn't screw with enough confidence.

Every time I hear those off brands it reminds me of those fake labels from that episode of the Simpsons, Sorny, Magnetbox, and Panaphonics.

How about making a follow up video about how these thumb drives are made (spoofed) and another video about "fixing" it to show the REAL capacity of the thumb drive.

1TB MicroSD is about $250 atm, as a benchmark. They're fairly new. This looks like a 32gb USB 2.0 flashdrive. 5 bucks on NewEgg (for a 3.1 drive)

Sorry but Amazon hasn't been a reputable e-retailer for a few years. I fully expect anything I buy there to be complete garbage

That is how they get you! It's a big Scam

Sadly I know of someone who fell for this scam, no matter how many times I tell him it's fake or that these scams exist he refuses to believe it's a scam "But it says it's 2tb and I can put stuff on it" I'll send a video like this showing how the scam works "But that's not the one I have, mine is legit"

There is a tool to test for fake thumb drives h2testw 1.4

Love to see someone promoting Montech cases. They’re underrated.

Amazon is quickly becoming about as trustworthy as Craig’s List

it's so hard to find a good high capacity flash drive. i don't know what to buy now

Super informative video, crazy to see how these scams work!

I had this EXACT issue and im so GLAD I found this video. I'm returning it to Amazon as we speak! I thank you for this, even if i am seeing it in 2023😅❤

Thank you very much for this video. It prevented me from buying this crap on Amazon. It makes me question every review on Amazon even more than I have before.

Love your vids, youre one of the tech channels we can trust

2:31 you just show your fingerprints in 4K, somebody might do something not good about it..

Thanks for posting this! I hadn’t heard about such drives, nor about the bogus (well, hijacked) non-English reviews. Great work.

Theres a video by Atomic Shrimp who also tests a supposed 2TB drive, what he did was put a video in the drive and open it to play it on repeat, and beside that he had a .bat file that would duplicate a .txt file full of "123456789" until it reached 8MB. So what happened was, he played the video, executed the .bat file and the drive began filling up with 8MB .txt's until the video stopped playing because it was being overwritten, in the end the supposed 2TB drive didn't even reach 1GB of actual space.

FYI, this exact model is still being sold as of today on Amazon. The candle reviews are still there.

I got scammed by this type of flash drive and lost almost 500gb of data. I'm glad I paid only $2 for it during a sale though.

7:18 Greg: "These are not USB 3 speeds" I actually have a few USB 3 pen drives (blue inside) that are that slow. 🤣

nice 1 Cyril , my 7 year old grandson, bought a 2TB SSD , as a surprise for me, his gran, & him did not tell me about this gift, but when it arrived I knew it was a Chinese fake, but did not have the heart to tell either of them...i think the vast majority of folks whom are plug & play computer users, like me 10 years ago, but i was taken in by the same scammers.. I approaching 70 years old, i never thought i would need to learn even the basics for these damn machines, & I was genuinely surprised , of how I learned so quickly especially regards the hardware side of a desk /laptop. [ RAM CPU etc ].even repair. it was the fact that i was scammed, that made me sit up, & started to learn a whole lot of stuff, that in the end i have been scam free, because of video's like this, & there are plenty of FREE software progs, that can spot the fakes in a heartbeat. I still think, the best way to ascertain, if these dirt cheap 2Tb SSD etc are fake, is to find out the average cost on reputable outlets but the BARGAIN CHIP in our brains, mostly wins out .with the phrase what if it is GENUINE ' if you have already bought it, then transfer a very large file/ folder OVERNIGHT, & in the morning the sorry an ' unexpected error meant we cant complete this task ' will await you. along with a smashed cornflakes bowl.. stay safe.

Technically it's the filesystem reporting that that 38.5GB figure is what's being used, not the drive, because the filesystem thinks that that's what's really there. This is because the file allocation table which stores all the info about the files on the filesystem is usually tucked away and protected. This means it won't generally be overwritten when you overfill the drive and why you see all of what are essentially ghost files because again the filesystem thinks they are there, but when you try to access them it draws a blank. The reason they can't be opened with a hex editor is not because they're corrupt, it's that they simply don't actually exist on the drive.

I'm not real computer literate. I saw these and read some reviews and they were all from people like me, who don't really know in depth about this. None of them actually showed the storage capacity in a way that satisfied me. So I came here. Glad I did. Thank you, you saved me $40 bucks.

My dad got me this for christmas and i don’t know how to tell him it was a scam 😭

Amazon and eBay both have some issues when it comes to USB flash drives. It’s sad two huge, million/billion dollar companies are allowing such blatant scams on such a large scale continue to exist on their platforms.

someone's dad is making these. "you want a 1TB thumb drive?" and the brand is "1TB"

Greg: This is a sham drive. The drive: *D:*

Hi Gregg, i bought a 1 TB drive 6 months ago on Amazon, I`m usually quite tech savvy and thought 60pounds for a drive was a great deal(should have known better) just did some of your tests, and i can say it! I got scammed by over 936GB :)! That said i contacted Amazon ( past return policy) and they are willing to refund me once they receive their drive. Glad this video exists thanks for all the help.

A tale as old as time... I doubt we'll ever get rid of these things from the market. But by the time we get 1TB thumb drives for real, I'm sure the scammers will be selling "10TB" drives...

Thanks for bring this scam to our attention

So helpful!! I was about to be fooled but you saved me!! OMG! Thank you for listing all the reputable brands, too! No such a thing, if it's too good to be true!

Why is amazon allowing this. They are selling crap... so now I wonder how many of my flash drives are fake?

How did they fool windows to think that it actually has 1TB though?

I found one on Amazon that says it's BOTH a hard disk drive AND a flash drive! There is NO SUCH THING!

This is exactly what happened to me. If you go to the failed files and pull up the tab, you'll see that none of the video or audio information has been copied. Both of these sections are blank.

Now some fake drives does space cycling. When the physical available space used up, it automatically deletes earliest data written, so the latest content written are always valid but older files are corrupted. Many users and testing software only check latest files/chunks which made those fake drives very deceivable.

Another source of aggravation is that most of these sites and sellers don't seem to know the difference between an "iPad" and an "iPad Pro." I keep searching for "external drive for iPad" and getting results that show nothing but either hard drives for iPad Pro or hard drives for Macs and PCs, or there are only flash drives and no hard drives.

😤😮😲 Thank you for making this video! I just returned that USB drive; I actually both 1 64GB and this 1TB that you said it's a scam. I was surprise when I received it, It was just in the very tiny envelope that you just showed us; and the other one that I bought that's 64GB is in the box and it was well protected. I was a bit concerned, that's why I search here on youtube if anybody have any review on this. That's when I found your channel, thank you so much.

Your test also shows why there might be some good reviews. The drive has just enough space that a casual user could use it for weeks before they hit the limit and their files start getting corrupted. They'll think it totally works, put in their review, and then find something went wrong months later when they go over the limit

Rubbish candles. Very hard to light.

Thanks for the info Greg, you probably saved alot of people from being scammed

Problem is they sell enough of these scam drives that DON'T get returned that it's profitable. And once caught they just sign up a new seller account and repeat.

Why does Amazon do nothing to stop this scam? It's actually hard to find a drive by a legit brand on Amazon due to all these fake drives.

Same thing they are doing with RAM. Cheap or discounted RAM are coded which shows 8 or 16GB RAM but it's actually 2 or 4GB RAM.

it's crazy amazon allows sellers to change the product page item like this smh. they enable scammers. they love it.

There's been some cases where scammers sell "1tb HDD" then one opened an hdd and saw it's only a damn basic 16gb usb 2.0

Saw a lot of 1tb drives on wish for half the average price,it actually worked but after the limit (maybe 16gb) it just corrupted your files,and most ppl didnt know that,so they gave good reviews for that without knowing the truth,its pretty sad

I ended up on this video today to show to my father what happens. - Ironically, I already told him about it before, but of course he ignored it and went ahead and now (a good while later) decided to purchase a 2TB USB-drive or something on AliExpress for about 5 Dollars. - Red flags immediately. I told him it's not what he's gonna get and it's better to just cancel and refund immediately. - Myself I even invested in a drive of 128GB of about 35 USD, and that price being pretty steep because of its speed. - I actually just tested it and it can write 100GB within about 10 minutes, so that's not bad.

What's worse is trying to explain to morons that think they're smart that it's a scam product...

me after taking a punt on a cheap '2tb' usb 3 on ebay 'ah. yeah thought so. let's cancel that order...'

thats why i click translate and also check other sites for other reviews

I've never had corrupt files like that. My computer always says there is not enough room to transfer files to the drive

I kept seeing these 1TB flash drives on ebay and I knew something was up with them.

Thanks for showing this kind of video as I myself a victim of this. I bought a 128gb loaded my photos and videos with my family but then when open it the next day. Its all corrupted. Like no photos atleast 1 photo is saved

Wait a min did I miss it or did he never show what they actually do to make it show as 976GB capacity? Still, good p.s.a but would have been interesting detail.

These noname drives have also been known to harbor malware, sometimes very sophisticated.

Found this video when looking for reliable flash drives sellers on amazon

All these drives are janky as hell thanks for confirming it for me I was wondering why all my files were just copying corrupted

Well that bloody explains why my files keep randomly disappearing

this is one of the thing i will not buy online the other is ssd. i buy all my flash memory from stores so if it isn't right i just take it back. i did somewhat get burned on a ssd that claimed to be 240gb when i got it in it was 120 off of amazon they refunded me and told me to keep it. i gave that ssd to my mom for her laptop and got the 240gb i needed at the time for that computer. my mom is still using that ssd today 2 years later and the other ssd i have in my backup computer that is right behind me

There are a number of programs that you can run that will tell you the actual size of the drive, I have had a number of sellers removed for selling scam drives. I only buy name brand drives even then I do not buy from companies that do not have a large list of sales.

Wish you would have explained how it was done 🤔

there's "name brands" for a reason.

I'm watched a video about scam of 2 Terabytes thumb drive just a minute ago and that video was from 2 years ago . And now this video , the scam still exist till this day .

Well it looks like I'm out of $25

Yeah, that changing the content of a Amazon listing has been going on for years. I had bought a portable battery for recharging my phone 3+ years ago off Amazon that fried a wall charger after a very short time of owning it, so I wrote a 1 star review on the Amazon listing. The no-name Chinese seller offered to send me a replacement if I would revise my review. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I agreed. I got my replacement and it seemed fine (honestly I had no way of really testing the battery capacity, so who knows what it's actual battery capacity was). After using it for a week or two without incident and getting a reminder from the seller, I went back to the listing to discover the listed item had changed to an SD card, if I recall correctly. I believe I edited it to reflect the replacement and then pointed out that the item on the page wasn't even a battery pack anymore so ignore my rating, then changed my rating, although I can't recall what to. Hopefully nothing better than 3 stars. This experience is one of the main reasons I always look at the 1 star reviews first and I tend to steer clear of the no-name Chinese products on Amazon, except for simple items, like cables, where it usually works or not, so you can return it really quickly, if needed.

Thumbs up for the 4k quality

According to the atomic shrimp channel, these fake drives have chips inside them (like all USBs) called the controller, which has been reprogrammed using special hacking software to misrepresent the true capacity of the separate storage chip. When you format or query properties, your computer isn’t looking at the storage media itself, it’s interacting with the controller that manages the storage (a good analogy is bit like a police officer trying to find a thief staying in a hotel, but can only communicate via the reception which has the power to mislead or lead him to the officer’s destination).

thanks for saving me $40 - I watched this JUST before completing my Amazon order lol

Is there any kind of reliable tool to analyze the *actual* capacity of a USB flash drive?

This happened to me too. I bought one off eBay for maybe like $20 or $25 but I had the same thing happen to me with some videos I took while on vacation in Mexico.I had some videos with dolphins riding our wake and at the bow of the boat and actually looking up at me while riding the wake and there was a baby in the middle of 2 adult dolphins. Well I had to save room on my iPhone so I put them on one of these thumb drives and I tested the videos before I deleted them from my phone but then one day I tried to view the videos and the videos were like green and had lines in them. It was a horrible moment for me because that was one of the best videos I ever had on my phone with nature. It was such an emotional moment with these dolphins and now I’ve lost it forever. It was such a joke.