Flash drive: Know the difference between the real & the fake 

Do you know that your flash stick may be a fake? Just as a lot of cheap hi-tech items available on the market, there is also a trend of faked, counterfeited & hacked USB sticks. In case, you purchase a flash drive from eBay or any other online shops that make you feel like you have made a superb deal, then it is more likely that you have bought a fake. So, how to deal with this problem?

First, you need to know the basic difference between a fake USB stick & the real one.Let us consider two basic areas of concern hare:  

Fake or hacked sticks: 

This is a situation where you purchase a 16GB flash drive but it is not really a 16GB. Now, it is not possible to tell whether it is a 16GB flash drive just by looking as it. It is also not prudent to rely on what windows tell you exactly. It may take you many months to notice this additionally the stick will fail to function with in a short span of time. This will make your bargain a bad one. Fakers actually sell you a hacked stick at lower price.  

Counterfeit sticks: 

 This is where you pay the price for a popular brand but get a cheap imitation. This is the reason that a shop selling popular brand actually charge you more is the quality they represent. You need to be extremely careful when purchasing a flash drive. This is because there are more chances of not knowing what you are actually purchasing. There are several ways to test your flash drive.  

If you want to know the real size of your flash drive, just open my computer (XP) or computer (vista) & then right click on the drive you want to check. Now select proportion. It is time to click on the hard ware tab. You will notice the names of drive here. Mostly a drive from a proper brand is named after its’ brand.  

The fake flash drive reports ‘generic flash drive’ or anything similar to this. Once you happen to see anything like this, you need to check deeper. Here are some other things to check out for.

Extra slow speeds or odd behavior

One of the most common signs of a fake flash drive is that you will come across a lot of corrupt or lost files. The second size is that the flash drive works at extra slow pace. If you want to test your flash drive for purity, you need to use a program known as h2 test w. This is a free program and you can easily download it from the developer’s website.  

Prior to getting started, you must make sure that your drive is empty. Hence, you need to keep a backup of all files you require. Delete everything else from the drive then download the program here, you just require right clicking the h2 test w.exe file & then selecting all the extract files. Run the h2 test w.exe file by eight clicking it. Choose the preferred language & click the select target button. Now, it is time to click the button ‘write & verity’.  

This will initiate the test. The process may take many hours together. In case the drive is genuine, you will get a message.“Test finished without errors” However, if you have a fake drive, you will get a warning message the goes like this. “On 16, 80 of 16 144 MBYte tested. The media may be defective”.