How to Tell if a USB Stick is Fake or Real

After reading Rebecca's article about fake usb flash drives, I understand that counterfeit USB sticks have been placed on sites like eBay and Amazon.com (had have recently been remove). I would like to know if there is a way to tell if a USB stick is fake before you buy it. I've recently seen a 128 gigabye USB stick manufactured by Buslink that can be purchased on sites like frontierpc.us and provantage.com. Is this one fake like the ones on eBay?

Are there ways to tell if other usb sticks are actually fakes without having to buy it and test its capacity?

Hi,

The single easiest way to check on a USB stick/thumb drive is to check the color and shape and supposed capacity in the picture you are looking at which advertises the drive, and then go to the manufacturer's website to look at their products. An example in the article; the white and lime green drive advertised as a 64GB Kingston drive is made only in a 2GB size. Name brand manufacturers like Kingston show their drives on their site, have created the color and design of each of their drives to vary by capacity and type, and tell you that lime green and white means it is a 2GB drive, or yellow and white in the same style means it is a 4GB drive. A claim that a yellow and white Kingston drive of that style is a 32GB or 64GB drive means the drive has been altered.

Another important indication is the price of the drive. Unless it is a one time sale of a used item, where you might find someone just selling a drive because they do not want it, resellers on eBay can not go below a certain price with a USB drive and make any money, because of the price of NAND memory chips. If they are selling or auctioning a drive for 1/2 to 1/10 the price it would be in stores or online, it is probably an altered drive, or culled from material the original brand name manufacturer tossed as defective or damaged, and not fit to be used in their products.

It is also an extremely good idea to buy from a reputable source. eBay does not really qualify as a reputable source to purchase electronics, because it is almost impossible to evaluate or enforce quality.

I found the BUSlink stick too. It is advertised on their site for $5,000 USD. That certainly doesn't make it seem a cheap knockoff, but there are a couple of oddities about it. I have not been able to find an actual review of the BUSlink 128GB Pro 2 USB flash drive on the Internet. They also have a section in their privacy policy saying that no hyperlinks are allowed TO their site without written permission, so I am not linking their site to the drive here. provantage.com does seems to be carrying it as a special order, for a few hundred dollars less, but searching for 128GB drive on the frontierpc.com site does not bring up that drive. They do have a somewhat mysterious product that comes up when you type in 128GB, with no picture, but does not connect in anyway to BUSlink. From the prices frontierpc.com has listed by those products, my guess is that they are internal SSD drives. The prices are more in line with internal 128GB SSD drives, and a 1/10 of what the BUSlink drive is selling for.

I am collecting information from people who bought fakes, to see what physical characteristics stand out as different from the originals, and will be publishing an article covering indications that a drive is suspicious.

If you have purchased a fake drive and think something about its appearance or any other factor will help keep other buyers from being cheated, you can contact me through Bright Hub and I will see if your information can be used in the article.

That BUSlink usb is certainly pricey – even pricier if it’s not an actual thumb drive or a fake.

There are a number of details you can check to decide whether a USB thumb drive on Amazon or eBay is worth paying for. In How to Identify Fake Flash Drives Before Buying Them, Bright Hub looks at the warning signs, and shows you what the new real 128GB drives actually look like. Our research is meant to keep you from being cheated and using valuable data. Included in the article is a rogue's gallery of faked USB flash drives of different capacities- including fake drives for 256GB and 512GB capacity. (NOT!) Protect yourself and your data- and don't give money to those trying to swindle you.