Testing your USB flash drive for fake storage capacity

As disk storage becomes cheaper to produce and higher capacity storage devices become more affordable, an unfortunate side effect has been an increased number of “fake” USB flash drives flooding the market. This leaves consumers cheated out of their money, and worse still, at risk of losing data stored on the device.

What is a fake USB flash drive?

When we talk about fake USB flash drives, we’re talking about the device claiming to have more space than is physically available. Some manufacturers and sellers have found that they can use a smaller capacity chip inside the flash drive, but have it “map” data to the same location repeatedly or even to locations that don’t exist. For example, an 8 GB chip could be made to map to itself 8 times so it appears to have 64 GB capacity. Worryingly this will fool most operating systems!

This means that as soon as you fill up that first 8 GB of space on the flash drive, further “writes” to the device will overwrite the existing data or simply not be saved at all.

How to spot USB flash drives with fake memory

These fake memory sticks are particularly common on Ebay, where the cheap price and minimal review of listings make it easier to get away with. Some of the listings may even describe the device’s memory as “upgraded” or “expanded”. If you see this in the description, run a mile!

If you’re worried you’ve purchased a USB flash drive like this already, there are at least tests available you can carry out. “FakeFlashTest” from RMPrepUSB is a free program you can download and run on the device. It simply tests each section of the memory to check that it’s physically there, reporting back any errors. Be careful to backup any existing data on the flash drive before carrying out these tests, as it will likely be overwritten as part of the testing process. More information about FakeFlashTest can be found here.

All USB flash drives sold by USBStuff are tested and guaranteed to have genuine storage capacity, so you can have no concerns when buying from us!