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Kingston Flash Drives on ebay

P

Pardus

Diamond Member
Several sellers are selling 128gig Kingston USB flash drives really cheap on ebay, i heard something about people hacking these devices to make them appear higher storage capacity then they really are.

When i emailed a few sellers and asked them if the flash drives were authentic and really the true amount, they all tell me the item is untested and sold as is.

Has anyone heard is this so-called flash drive hacking is true as i would like to get one of these but don't want to get stuck with a dud or something the manufacturer won't honor if it was tampered with.

Thanks.
 
I've heard of this on ebay many months ago. I guess it's still going on.
Caveat emptor...
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
 
If they're telling you that they are "untested and sold as is" they are almost 100% likely to be a rip off. It's not like it would be hard for them to plug the flash drive into a computer and verify the size if they were a reputable seller, but they are obviously just looking to make a quick buck off of people that don't read the fine print.
 
i heard something about people hacking these devices to make them appear higher storage capacity then they really are
Click to expand...
A friend of mine purchased a 16gb flash drive on Ebay from Hong Kong. I was there when he tried it. The thing had a trojan on it linked to an autorun.ini file to execute as soon as it was plugged in, fortunately, he had autorun disabled. Next, he tried to copy an ISO to it and it crapped out at 2gb, despite being formatted to NTFS and showing up as 16gb in Windows explorer. I assume that they modified the controller to trick the OS into thinking that it was larger than it actually was.

But, the vendor did refund his money.
 
Why would you buy a flash drive off ebay? They are already cheap enough at places like tigerdirect, and at least you know you're buying new.

Flash drives degrade from use so these probably have very high mileage.
 
RedSquirrel said:
Why would you buy a flash drive off ebay? They are already cheap enough at places like tigerdirect, and at least you know you're buying new.

Flash drives degrade from use so these probably have very high mileage.
Click to expand...

some times there are good deals on ebay, but with all these hong kong sellers, i stay away.
 
Yep, it is trivial to alter the partition table and create a partition that is larger than the physical device. These are most likely fakes with at most 2GB of flash in them.
 
It is true that counterfeit USB drives continue to be sold on Ebay. Kingston gets calls daily from users who have purchased counterfeit USB drives from various auction sites.

That issue about the drive getting a 2GB flash chip and being programmed as a larger capacity is very common with the calls we receive.

I've seen one with the casing opened up, inside was the end of a USB cable someone had cut off and placed it so the USB connector was sticking out and casing sealed back up. This was purchased as a 16GB drive from a seller on Ebay.

Kingston Tech Support
800-435-0640
 
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