The really sad part is, some of the people defending this scam are unaware that they've lost their data, because of how it keeps accepting new data up to the stated 2TB, but in fact overwrites earlier data. No doubt they've not tried to access their older data, and are just assuming because they can keep copying new data to the device, and they can see all the filenames, that it's working. Wait until they try opening some of those older files. They're in for a rude awakening!
Too true. It's annoying that people think just because they copied their files onto the device, and they can see them listed, that they're going to get them back
Oh man it hurts my brain that people just believe what they see, and second that instead of investigating it properly themselves just immediately type a comment
Who doesn't have 10 minutes to watch a video? What nonsense. This is by far my new favorite channel. "I take the risks so you don't have to." Now THAT is a great and noble cause. I appreciate it brother!
Honestly, you could really just crank up the volume or put in some earbuds or what have you, and listen to it as you work or do whatever it is you intend to do.
your voice sounds extremely professional and satisfying. it's like the male siri is making videos. your attitude is perfectly calm to the point where one would know you have a soul but question if the level your intellect is, being how high it is, is it really human. were you born with a unique build that allows you to be on such a higher level of thought and performance than mankind?
Yeah - someone put it quite succinctly in one of the other comments: "If you could make a 2tb flash drive, would you sell if for £11? Of course not" (dammit, I should have featured that comment as it was quite useful)
Liars aside, the ones who think their drives worked do so because they did a shallow, incomplete test. Some fakes crap out when you try to write more than the true capacity, but Windows has a tendency to often not report flash-media write errors. Also, some are hacked to keep letting you write to the fake capacity, but simply cycle back and overwrite previous blocks, so it _looks_ like it's filled with 2TB, but the files are corrupt (if you actually check them, which they didn't).
Empoleon Master If you've got a big file that can't be easily split though. But really i think at that point you should get an external hard drive. You can get 4TB hard drive for 100$ But there are some rich people willing to buy convenience and speed. Flash drives are faster and smaller
www.amazon.com/Kingston-2TB-DataTraveler-Ultimate-DTUGT/dp/B06X1CSCZB/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=2TB%2BUSB%2BDrive%2BKingston&qid=1565078993&s=gateway&sr=8-3&th=1&psc=1 I highly doubt this is fake. I’ve got one and have nearly 400GB worth of stuff on it so far. Going good as far as I can tell, maybe it’s slowed down because of all the stuff but I still think it’s good!
Atomic Shrimp Well I did pay for it, and it wasn’t something I was willing to just pay for, someone had to convince me to do it. I’m glad I didn’t change me my mind.
I often teach English to international children and help their parents understand some "new" concepts from a Western p.o.v. So, I genuinely thank you for your wonderful spoken English, your diverse vocabulary and your informative videos. I completely concur with your findings. Keep up the good work.
Why would anyone think this is real? I mean if I told you I will sell you a 4k 60" tv for $5.00 would you trust me? I can only imagine the people buying these are people who know nothing about them and just want something to put photos on which makes me more upset because like most other scams this is just targeting peoples grandparents who probably don't understand technology to begin with. So if your videos can keep even one person from getting scammed that is awesome. Love your vids
@@AtomicShrimp That was my thought, especially since so many seemed to have laughed at you for using an actual _write test_ instead of just looking up the size in File Mangler.
I fell for this back then. Bought it on Wish for 97% reduction. From like 300€ to 10€. Looked at properties and it showed 2TB so I was like "Seems to work out". If there was only one of these then I wouldn't have fallen for this. But I saw entire pages of these things so I assumed it must simply be cheap to manufacture them.
People (a huge generalization but whatever) always find something to complain about. Your videos are absolutely fine no matter how short or long they may be. Just keep on doing videos you feel comfortable with. Thanks for the great content. :)
Ok mr shrimp. Let’s just get it out there. The main thing wrong with your videos is that they are not long enough. I’d be happy to watch/ listen to an hour of you doing scams/ foraging/ crafts/ science / cans/ cooking etc. 🤣 Oh and there’s sometimes NO Eva which is always disappointing. ☹️ Keep up the good work 👍
Yeah but my neighbour's friend's uncle's best friend works for Microsoft and he has a 5TB memory stick that he bought off Wish for £1.50 and he verified it as genuine using his Microsoft. ur juts jelus.
11 minutes isn't that long really. The video was just fine. You know what senseless padding is? Making 5 minutes of content and then repeating it. Making 2 minutes of content followed by 8 minutes of black. Iv'e seen people do that. It's disgusting.
H2testw should be able to help identify a fake... ooops looks like you did that already.... you are right... never risk data on a device like this.. lovely video mate! Great graphics and an education for those that may have been ripped off by unscrupulous sellers!
The trouble is that the write speed on some of these drives is so poor that a full test with any software would take forever. I recommend testing them for 32GB with H2TestW - that should be enough to expose most fakes (or, y'know, just throw them away, because there's no way they can be real)
If you can unhack it and it's true capacity is reasonably large, you can use it for expendable files like downloaded media and such which you don't care if you lose and/or can just re-download, especially if it's something you don't intend to write often since the speed can be slow. But definitely don't trust important or irreplaceable files to these (I'm not even comfortable trusting them to brand-name drives I buy in the store).
I love lainey87's comment at 0:50, it's always a treat seeing people who really don't understand a situation call people who understand better than them 'an idiot'! A nice example of the Dunning-Kruger effect I believe.
excellent video. I love your calm and correct wording. I am awaiting a 2 TB device from e b a y . but now I have just seen your video. Well done to you, please keep showing things for what they are. I also ordered a blue tooth earpiece. it was supposed to work by vibrating sound into the bones in our jaw or skull. as a matter of fact, when it arrived, from e b a y , via ch, it was a big regular earpiece, with a hollow plastic tube, that aims directly into the ear canal, like a hearing aid. also it allows people in the same room to listen to the transmitted sound, which I bought this to avoid in the 1st place. thanks again. 10/10
I've seen videos on TH-cam about how to make a HiFi speaker with a paper plate, cello tape and a penny. It amazes me the huge number of commenters that claim they made it work and it sounds better than a system by BOSE! I don't get why people do such videos or say such things. Also, I watch videos for entertainment, education and interest. So, longer is better for me. If I run out of time, I mark it for watch later. I appreciated your video, Atomic Shrimp, and the time you took to make it. For me, keep em coming! Subscribed now!
Just found you love this channel and the intro, you seem like a very genuine guy. Your email scam video was gold that could be a series, but even if you didn’t I’d keep watching lol keep it up man
Very helpful video and uploaded at the perfect time. I just got a 2TB USB drive from Wish, not having the knowledge of what is a reasonable price for a USB that large. My dad handed me a 1TB external hard drive and told me its price. That's what brought me here. I immediately took all of my files and copied them back on to my mac. I had 5 years worth of photos, and hours of music that I had created myself. I also contacted support and got an immediate $15 refund (the money is supposed to arrive in 10-15 days.) Thanks! I really like what your channel does. I've gone ahead and watched quite a few vids and even subscribed.
@@alexsonic7 that's strange, every file on there should be corrupted if you copied it to and back from this drive, seeing as it doesn't actually have the amount of memory required needed to store those files. Have you checked all your files? Or how large was the total storage space that was used up by your files?
It's a Mac, wouldn't all of that be safely stored in your iCloud account? Btw, external hard drives rock. I have a 1Tb Seagate cutie that I keep all of my files on. I have 3 computers and can simply plug the External in to any of them, and have my files. Had to replace the HDD in my desktop in Oct. did not have to worry about storing my stuff elsewhere while I did the job, as it was never really on the HDD to begin with.....
1. I checked all my files and none are corrupt. 2. The reason I moved the files on to the drive was that iCloud was at 95-100% full. 3. It has some amount of storage on it but I didn't hit the cap where it started overwriting anything.
I can confirm, I bought already several so called 2Tb USB sticks from Wish. And ALL of them showed 2TB in the properties, but when I tried to put over 16Gb on them, they simple didn't work any more. And in ALL cases I requested a refund from Wish and got this. The fake drives are still available in 2022 (well to be correct at least at the end of december 2021).
To those complaining about video lengths....... don’t watch the whole video if it isn’t what you expect......move along, keep your butthurt comments to yourselves and do something else with your valuable time.
Do people know youtube has a playback speed feature? Most youtube videos sound like there slow motion if you dont put it on 1.25 or 1.75 depending on the youtuber.
I enjoyed the video enormously. I normally just laugh out loud at potential scammers but it's great to see them having their time wasted and seeing them lose their temper.
Hey man, most people don't mind longer videos and most people also don't have any negative things to say about your scam stuff. It's nice to address some other concerns people have ofc, but don't let it get to you. Think of it this way, people are *exponentially* more likely to place a negative comment than to place a positive one. A lot more people then in the comments enjoy the video. Most people will watch it and be done, or watch it, leave a like, and be done. This is actually why Amazon reviews or any other website are flawed, in a sense. When most people get a product that works they don't go back to leave feedback, but if they get a product that's broken or malfunctioning they are muuuch more likely to leave negative feedback.
I just saw an ad for this 2TB usb stick on facebook and warned anyone who shared it. I ran into some people who refused to believe me and actually got mad at me so strange. This thing must be a conspiracy with a lot of people in on it.
With no commercials, you could make any video length you wanted and i'd still watch it. Trolls gonna Trollololololol. I love your vids. Keep at them at your leisure. ;)
Awesome videos, both!! Watched just to late. My mother saw it and has I have an account, I had to buy. Being in IT I knew it was fake, but for the price I had to know and didn’t have anything to loose. As for the length of your videos, the information you get is the time worth!! 😉👍🏻
Watched this video and now I’m getting loads of adverts for very cheap 2TB drives from all sorts of dodgy companies. Thanks for pointing out it’s fake and for pointing out Wish is a dodgy site.
Just found your page. Love how thorough and informational you are. And just drops the hammer on everyone and everything. I mean even inkjet printers lol
0:38 Did you know that the inventor of the USB plug recently died? When they lowered the coffin they had to raise it back up and turn it over before it would fit into the grave.... ;-)
You are very honest and likable TH-camr. I'm really disappointed on how rude some people are in the comments. There just is so much trash people. But please continue doing you, i really enjoy your videos, more than i could of though. Keep the good work.
Just to make it clear for anyone interested. The fastest way to check whether the flash drive has the real capacity is to format it to NTFS, if there are a lot of damaged/inaccessible blocks the system will detect it as corrupt. All these scams are based on the fact that FAT system writes files/folders from the begging of the flash and makes links between them and the only limit is the hard-coded value. In such a fashion it will write to the flash until the flash chip runs out of addresses, in that case you will start to get partially corrupt files or no files at all. NTFS works a little different in the fact that when you create a partition, it writes information related to partition not only at the begging but at the end also. When you will create a 2TB partition, only the first part will be written to the flash, making it corrupt. Now the assumption you made with factory calibration are not entirely correct. The flash drive consists of 2 main components: controller and flash memory (NAND memory chip usually). The controller has the job that ensures correct communication over USB protocol and addressing to the flash chip, some advanced ones might even have some diagnostics in case a lot of NAND chunks go bad. Now every controller has a small program for doing all these tasks written into it called firmware, all firmwares are provided by the manufacturer of the controller and they usually go as: type of nand memory + size (it also can be stored at the begging of NAND flash in some cases). Why I told you all that is the fact that these flash drives are usually manufactured/assembled/programmed in China. The problem is that those firmwares got leaked and pretty much everyone can reprogram a controller. There are even tons of tools that let you do that very easy, most likely gotten from the factories where they program the flash drive. Now there is the possibility as you said that a lot of chunks are damaged, however in case when the NAND flash is working, the changing of firmware requires you to find the serial number of controller with that flash combination.
Imagine not only believing that a 2 TB USB from Wish would cost less and be the same size as the average 16 GB USB you would find at your local electronics store but also being so delusional that you will say that the product worked perfectly, which may lead to more people buying the product and getting scammed.
I bought a 512GB PNY flash drive on Amazon for $80 for my last birthday in early 2019. That was marked half off of its original price, and the best deal I could find at the time. It amazes me that people are so quick to throw out anecdotes such as "Use GParted" or "Device Properties" to check the "actual" capacity, yet many of them admit to not having watched the entire video or simply complained about its length (which speaks volumes about their attention spans anyway). I guess it's quicker to throw up a comment than to simply skip to your 4-minute video with the fake micro SD card, in which you actually used GParted and it saw it as a 512GB device. Regardless, very nice work on these tests!
Seriously, I love your work. ya know I was trying to pack tonight, got a little distracted. Take your subscription and your thumbs ups Manuel/Manfried/Mange
I may be an idiot but I bought 2. It was a buy 1 get 1 free. I am nowhere as educated as the youtuber so forgive my ignorance. The first thing I did was format both drives. I then installed a movie to see if it would play back. The movie played just fine so I transferred more almost 2 terabytes in movies. The cheap thumb drive said its capacity was 1.9 terabytes and it seems to work just fine. Now I am worried because I needed the space on my computer and thought this thumb drive would be a safe backup.......... I went back and checked to see if the movies worked. They do not. I cant believe that I fell for a scam. I trusted the thumb drive after formatting and testing it. I didn't copy the movies to the thumb drive, I moved them and now they are all gone. I lost my stuff but you gained a fan.
I am sorry to hear about that - and I am sure there must be a lot of people out there who have suffered loss of data for the same reasons. If you haven't re-used the empty capacity on your computer hard drive, it may be possible for an 'undelete' utility (like this one: sourceforge.net/projects/kickassundelete/ ) to recover some of the files that previously resided there, because deleting files from disks usually only comprises removing their catalog entry, not actually wiping the space where they are stored. (there is of course no hope of doing this on the fake 2tb drives, as the data copied there was lost before it got there)
Do me and others a favor and don't listen to the crack pots who think you are being dishonest or don't know what you are doing. Some people are just driven by their internal egos and feed them by trying to make themselves appear superior. I've been an IT, or was anyway, for over 25 years. If I thought for a second you did not perform adequate testing or did not know the risks I would, well....just stop watching. Keep up the good work man. AE
I think these videos on scams and viruses are very important today and I hope that over time more people see them. I wouldn't consider anybody in my own family stupid, but I have an uncle who got scammed and paid a few hundred bucks when popup windows told him that his computer was infected (way over a decade ago), my mom told me around 5 years ago that she had a yearly plan with "Microsoft Customer Support" for their small business, and my youngest brother bought a 1TB hard drive for $60 a few years back. Fortunately, they had me... Got my uncle and my brother's money back in full. I wasn't able to get all of my mom's money back because she was giving money to that scam for an embarassing amount of time, but I bleached her computer and helped her reinstall all of her stuff on a new laptop since the one she was using was due for an upgrade anyhow. The problem is that this technology came on so fast. Intelligent people who had never had any use for a computer and very little training if any in their lives nearly overnight lived in a world where they're surrounded by them. I always liken it to most people's relationship with their cars. Everybody knows how to pump gas into them. Some people might even know how to change the oil and a tire. But almost none of them understand how anything works under the hood. Unfortunately, preying on ignorance is sometimes even easier than preying on stupidity.
I watched another TH-cam video not long ago about the same kind of deal. Some tech reviewer bought a "supposed" 2TB flash drive for a ridiculously low price. It tested fine on software but then he disassembled it. Inside the thing was jerry rigged, and those 2TB of storage turned out to be a 2GB micro card. I think he paid $29 for it. Walgreens is selling 16GB flash drives right now for $7.99.
Whats happening with all the people claiming that the cheap drives are real is either: 1) They actually bought the expensive and actually real ones but have poor listening and reading comprehension skills. Or 2) They are lying or don't actually know what theyre talking about. Dunning Kruger striking again. You'd be surprised how far people will go to make it seem like they weren't scammed. All to prop up their fragile ego. I dont get the 11min thing enough. I love long form content. If they cant stand 11m they should just go back to tiktok or just watch shorts. Maybe also goto their doctor for adhd meds as their attention span is not normal.
Good video , I worked in a semiconductor fab for over 13 years for a household name, The over provisioning of flash ram is used in most devices containing flash ram not just flash memory cards/usb/ssd devices and the flash controller in devices with the original firmware doesn't just map out the bad blocks at the factory but will dynamically test and retire blocks as they become unreliable with excessive write cycles... There's a good chance that unless you can find the exact firmware for the combination of flash ram and controller this 'anti aging' function will be also lost ... Also on cheap non big brand but 'real' Usb/SSD/as cards/ drives the over provisioning is almost always lower meaning they fail sooner as there are less spare blocks...this simply makes them much cheaper to make.....simply As you put it if it looks too cheap to be true ..it is.
*spots own comment at **0:27* Still would not trust poking that USB stick into my PC tho... Thanks for taking the risk... Atomic Shrimp is our tech condom
@@AtomicShrimp I mean... hey... be glad you are the condom... could have been something worse like a fleshlight or buttplug :> Unless you are into those things that is...
On top of having unreliable storage, reprogramming these drives really isn't viable since they are most likely marked up from the msrp of the same drive sold legitimately while remaining "a good deal" for the fake capacity. And when you factor in the time dedication to reprogram it, you're better off just buying a legit drive from a reputable vendor.
I think he means for people who already bought one without knowing (I did and I reformatted it and it seems to work fine, but I won't be using it for anything important)
I have just had an advert from “go groupie” advertising 1T for £9.99 or 2 T for £15.99, guess I will give that one a huge swerve. Thanks guys from an oap with what one would call fairly knowledgeable but is always on the lookout for a genuine good deal. I thought it may be a genuine deal as it was from a reputable company lol
Good on ya, mate. Didn't see the original video but it's good you're getting the information out there. H2TestW is a great program - had to get it when I suspected an SD card I bought from an online auction wasn't the genuine article. Turns out it wasn't and the guy tried to bald-face lie about it until I sent photos of the card compared with photos of a genuine one and a copy of the test results to the site's administrators - that ended the argument abruptly. It's left me paranoid about things like that and I won't submit feedback for any USB/SD memory I buy until after I've done a full write/read test to confirm capacity and speed class - so thanks to that one dick, honest vendors have to _wait_ to receive positive feedback.
Yeah! Fuck them haters man! Just do your thing! Even if the guy wanted to bring out a lengthy video for monetization, so what? Your content is genuine on educating your viewers and I appreciate that man!
Great video as for me I was able to get a refund from eBay for one of these flash drives. I'm just happy the seller was friendly and compliant. Yet in this case I'd rather be safe than sorry.
Some things I just don't buy online, memory is one. I go to a local tech store, I pay a reasonable price for a product I can take back if it is faulty.
The fact that wish doesn’t allow negative reviews if you return the item sucks. AliExpress is better because you can still leave reviews no matter what.
I'm ALWAYS suspicious of perfect scores on any website. Though I didn't realize negative reviews could be filtered by such an insidious protocol. I just assumed there wasnt any legit review system in place (Although I have seen comment boxes that simply dont transmit any data at all, the buttons dont have any script behind them) I'm actually slightly annoyed at the fact that scammers don't even bother to make their review good but not perfect, to make them slightly more believable. It's a silent testament to how easily some people are fooled.
This is why I prefer Amazon, they have massive rules these days on scammers and fake reviews; just last month Amazon caused the arrest of 270 scammers and also shut down nearly over a 100 account for making fake reviews. Thus, they are a bit better about keeping an eye on things, EBay tends to not watch anything until it starts to get really bad...like when someone try to sale the country of New Zealand for a dollar or when people sale food that was “eaten by a celebrity.”
Well, let me say a big THANK YOU . I was seriously considering buying one of these flash drives, thinking it would be the safer option to use for my close to 1TB of files on by laptop . I've used 2TB external hard drives before, but the problem with those is even if you don't drop them, they still run down pretty quickly and start that dreaded " clicking " . And where I live, the electronics repair shops, all claim that they can't fix them or that it would be less costly to just consider the files on them LOST and just buy another hard drive, which will probably do the same . I'm tired of starting all over with a new hard drive . Any suggestions ?
Make sure to buy a SSD External Hard Drive, an Solid State Drive uses flash memory not spinning disks so they are more durable and resistant to physical damage, and they are also faster.
I should note that not all sellers of tech are scammers. I've never used Wish or Alibaba, but in the last year I did purchase a aftermarket proprietary fan for an all-in-one HP desktop system that is about 12 years old but is still great for my everyday needs. The fan was making more and more noise over the course of the year and then just completely stopped working. I was only able to get it to work temporarily by cleaning it and throwing some oil on the bearings, but after months of grinding I knew that wouldn't last long. The problem was, it's a legacy machine and HPs website didn't even offer up any of the Mobo or BIOS software anymore. You don't even want to know the story of what I had to go through to find the BIOS update in hopes to get a 256GB SSD that I wasted $40 on working in it (which I never was able to do even after flashing the BIOS... the machine is just too old to use SSD directly on the Mobo). Only one seller that I could find had a replacement fan. I found them on Alibaba, but not trusting that site I kept searching. It turns out the exact same seller also had the item listed on Amazon, albeit for about $7 more. Shipping on either site was estimated at 2 to 3 months. I just had to cross my fingers, hope that I wasn't being scammed and hope my fan kept working until then. To my surprise, only abouit 10 days later I got it, immediately swapped it out, and now it's been about 8 months with my computer working like brand new and silent without all the noise of grinding bearings. It cost me about $16 shipped on Amazon. It would have cost around $8 or $9 from Alibaba, but since I was already taking a chance I decided that it was less risk through Amazon. I'm virtually poor, and I'm the cheapest SOB you know. That was a very hard decision to make, and knowing that it turned out fine to this day it still haunts me that I might have screwed myself out of $7 or $8 by not just buying it on Alibaba. :)
My hubby is doing this...buying crap from Wish. I told him that the pictures are never what shows up! Its bubble gum machine junk. Sure. They are cheap, but what you're getting can not only ruin a computer, have faulty wiring that causes fires, break after 10 minutes because they make it like that on purpose! But the chemicals used to make the plastics, 'shmetal' (shitty metal or fake metal), paints, toys with oily residue & toxic smell, even clothing or materials we sleep in/on can be highly flammable or contain carcinogenic chemicals like mercury. This can also cause adverse reactions and episodes such as COPD & asthma attacks. This stuff might as well be treated like a drug syndicate.
another question for write test. can you do a dd if=/dev/urandom on linux to test the true storage space of the fake device or will it still be tricked?
I tried that and it just seems to obediently write the output files - I think whichever way you write to these things, the action of writing to the flash memory is always delegated to the controller in the media, so any method will result in files being dumped into the directory (and their contents into the void)
Hello Atomic Shrimp, I really wish I have found this video of yours 2 years sooner but I'm afraid I was too late. the thing is I already moved worth 250gb movies in my newly bought fake 2tb flash drive and when I tried to play the video I transferred, it won't play anymore even if I move it back to my desktop. I'm about to dispose this flash drive but before that I just want to know if there is still a way to make the videos I transferred playable again. hope you can still leave a reply in my comment.
I mean, look on the bright side. They sell these cheap usb sticks for a low price and not for the price of a real 2TB usb. I unfortunately did buy one of these and didn't realise it was fake. I still have it.
they can do the same with graphics cards selling £500 cards for less then £100. If you plug it in it says its the £500 pound card and will work(ish) until you try to run a game and then it will crash, or it just wont work at all.
The easiest way to find these is to get one with a full USB connector and either see through the case or disassemble it. Find the flash chip info and put it on Google. If the capacity does not match what was advertised, it's 100% confirmed fake. If it contains 1 flash chip despite advertising 1TB or more, it has 80% chance of being fake. (Flash chips have a rectangular shape and are much larger than the controller chips.) If it's a unibody design and it claims to have 1TB+ capacity, it's 99.9999% fake.
it seems atomic shrimp makes his videos to inform uninformed people who are most likely old people who fall for these things, unable to do what you described. but your comment seems like something fun for a technologically competent person to try at home.
@@Abby_Liu I couldn't agree with you more -- it's true that my way of finding counterfeit USB sticks isn't something that can be done with everyone. So here's a good way to avoid these things: 1.
Coming back to this video after so long, I'm gonna throw a long shot and see if you'll notice this. Would it be possible to salvage what remains of the overwritten wsiac file (perhaps by inserting hex values at the end to match the end value for an mp4 file) and then see the results? Thanks.
Just ignore the people who talk about the time limit. People who complain about that have little understanding of how TH-cam monetization works. They hear so many TH-camrs talk about the 10 minute mark as a joke for more money. But, they don't realise that you can only make more money with a 10 minute video if you add midrolls.
I bought one of those to see what was up. In the comments on wish people were saying it worked so it clearly could store some files. I left it one night having burstcoin plotfiles being created on it. Came back the next day and it was dead. So I couldn't find out how big it really was. Inside mine was a green circuit board with an unbranded chip on it.
I doubt it. I'll buy all sorts of cheap things from Wish and similar sites, but if I'm buying stuff that I'm wanting to rely on - like memory or good-quality high-capacity batteries, I'll usually only deal with vendors I trust - reputable firms, not virtual suitcases-on-card-tables at an online bazaar - and/or buy brands I know and trust. Even then, I test what I get - "trust, but verify"...
I have a 2TB drive, it’s about 20cm by 10cm in length so quite large, and quite expensive, NOT a small little thing for like 2 dollars, idk what people are thinking
I got one for free as an addon from aliexpres to my order, and on write test i was konda suprised, the speed was pretty fast, but the capacity at wich it started to lose data was about 24gb
The really sad part is, some of the people defending this scam are unaware that they've lost their data, because of how it keeps accepting new data up to the stated 2TB, but in fact overwrites earlier data. No doubt they've not tried to access their older data, and are just assuming because they can keep copying new data to the device, and they can see all the filenames, that it's working. Wait until they try opening some of those older files. They're in for a rude awakening!
Too true. It's annoying that people think just because they copied their files onto the device, and they can see them listed, that they're going to get them back
Oh man it hurts my brain that people just believe what they see, and second that instead of investigating it properly themselves just immediately type a comment
If Wish doesn't allow reviews for refunded items, then they're DEFINITELY complicit in the scams.
Who doesn't have 10 minutes to watch a video? What nonsense.
This is by far my new favorite channel. "I take the risks so you don't have to."
Now THAT is a great and noble cause. I appreciate it brother!
Honestly, you could really just crank up the volume or put in some earbuds or what have you, and listen to it as you work or do whatever it is you intend to do.
I wonder if I gave it 10 years or so will I actually be able to get a 2tb USB stick for that price?
Probably. And we'll be talking about how the 2 exabyte drives are fake
Actually, probably only a few years - 3 or so - before terabyte USB will be real at affordable prces
Did I just reply without reading who was commenting?!?!
Massive fan of your channel, huge delight to see you commenting here!
Lol Cody's lab is here!
Celebrity double-take, eh?
2:35 option 4 is denial that they've been scammed
your voice sounds extremely professional and satisfying. it's like the male siri is making videos. your attitude is perfectly calm to the point where one would know you have a soul but question if the level your intellect is, being how high it is, is it really human. were you born with a unique build that allows you to be on such a higher level of thought and performance than mankind?
Most kind of you.
BTW I wasn't born calm - it has taken 50 years of practice to the point where I can keep it up
Vince Ark I agree atomic shrimp is a good person
Can't believe people actually tried to claim theirs worked. Yeah wish must really be selling a £1000+ device for £11 or under.
Yeah - someone put it quite succinctly in one of the other comments: "If you could make a 2tb flash drive, would you sell if for £11? Of course not"
(dammit, I should have featured that comment as it was quite useful)
Liars aside, the ones who think their drives worked do so because they did a shallow, incomplete test. Some fakes crap out when you try to write more than the true capacity, but Windows has a tendency to often not report flash-media write errors. Also, some are hacked to keep letting you write to the fake capacity, but simply cycle back and overwrite previous blocks, so it _looks_ like it's filled with 2TB, but the files are corrupt (if you actually check them, which they didn't).
a genuine kingston 2Tb drive is £1,272.29 (amazon)
Holy shit 1.2k for a flash drive? At that point just buy a binder, fill it with 64 gb flash drives and save yourself $600+
Empoleon Master
If you've got a big file that can't be easily split though.
But really i think at that point you should get an external hard drive. You can get 4TB hard drive for 100$
But there are some rich people willing to buy convenience and speed. Flash drives are faster and smaller
I think the people defending these things are just cranky they made a stupid purchase, but they don't want to admit it ;p
Sunk cost fallacy strikes again!
Yeah, that and the Dunning Kruger Effect maybe
www.amazon.com/Kingston-2TB-DataTraveler-Ultimate-DTUGT/dp/B06X1CSCZB/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=2TB%2BUSB%2BDrive%2BKingston&qid=1565078993&s=gateway&sr=8-3&th=1&psc=1 I highly doubt this is fake. I’ve got one and have nearly 400GB worth of stuff on it so far. Going good as far as I can tell, maybe it’s slowed down because of all the stuff but I still think it’s good!
That one isn't fake, but look at the price. Did you pay that price for it?
Atomic Shrimp Well I did pay for it, and it wasn’t something I was willing to just pay for, someone had to convince me to do it. I’m glad I didn’t change me my mind.
I often teach English to international children and help their parents understand some "new" concepts from a Western p.o.v. So, I genuinely thank you for your wonderful spoken English, your diverse vocabulary and your informative videos. I completely concur with your findings. Keep up the good work.
Why would anyone think this is real?
I mean if I told you I will sell you a 4k 60" tv for $5.00 would you trust me?
I can only imagine the people buying these are people who know nothing about them and just want something to put photos on which makes me more upset because like most other scams this is just targeting peoples grandparents who probably don't understand technology to begin with. So if your videos can keep even one person from getting scammed that is awesome.
Love your vids
I reckon at least half of them truly believed they had tested their unit because they had looked at the properties in their file manager.
@@AtomicShrimp That was my thought, especially since so many seemed to have laughed at you for using an actual _write test_ instead of just looking up the size in File Mangler.
hk4124
I trust you, I would pay you when you already send me the TV, I hope you’re responding
Regards,
John warosa
I fell for this back then. Bought it on Wish for 97% reduction. From like 300€ to 10€.
Looked at properties and it showed 2TB so I was like "Seems to work out".
If there was only one of these then I wouldn't have fallen for this. But I saw entire pages of these things so I assumed it must simply be cheap to manufacture them.
The worse would be to actually pay close to genuine price and get a stupid fake.
People (a huge generalization but whatever) always find something to complain about. Your videos are absolutely fine no matter how short or long they may be. Just keep on doing videos you feel comfortable with. Thanks for the great content. :)
Ok mr shrimp. Let’s just get it out there. The main thing wrong with your videos is that they are not long enough. I’d be happy to watch/ listen to an hour of you doing scams/ foraging/ crafts/ science / cans/ cooking etc. 🤣
Oh and there’s sometimes NO Eva which is always disappointing. ☹️
Keep up the good work 👍
There’s no shame in putting more ads on your video. You are putting hard work into entertaining us, make that money man.
Yeah but my neighbour's friend's uncle's best friend works for Microsoft and he has a 5TB memory stick that he bought off Wish for £1.50 and he verified it as genuine using his Microsoft. ur juts jelus.
No u
AtomicShrimp lads and gentlemen we gottem
And my dog who works for Santa got promoted and said you’re on the naughty list this year
LMAO this is the most mature conversation in all of the Internets.
Mina R I’m telling mom
I personally don't mind longer videos
totally agree no one's making you watch the whole video.
The information you get is the time worth!! 😉
I don't get why people are upset. I guess they think he should make videos for free.
11 minutes isn't that long really. The video was just fine. You know what senseless padding is? Making 5 minutes of content and then repeating it. Making 2 minutes of content followed by 8 minutes of black. Iv'e seen people do that. It's disgusting.
Gimme some of that *big content*
H2testw should be able to help identify a fake... ooops looks like you did that already.... you are right... never risk data on a device like this.. lovely video mate! Great graphics and an education for those that may have been ripped off by unscrupulous sellers!
The trouble is that the write speed on some of these drives is so poor that a full test with any software would take forever. I recommend testing them for 32GB with H2TestW - that should be enough to expose most fakes
(or, y'know, just throw them away, because there's no way they can be real)
If you can unhack it and it's true capacity is reasonably large, you can use it for expendable files like downloaded media and such which you don't care if you lose and/or can just re-download, especially if it's something you don't intend to write often since the speed can be slow. But definitely don't trust important or irreplaceable files to these (I'm not even comfortable trusting them to brand-name drives I buy in the store).
I love lainey87's comment at 0:50, it's always a treat seeing people who really don't understand a situation call people who understand better than them 'an idiot'! A nice example of the Dunning-Kruger effect I believe.
"An Atomic Shrimp video is never too long. Nor is it too short. It is precisely as long as it needs to be"
You’re saying that as if Atomic Shrimp videos *can* be too long
He's trying to use logic and common sense against the internet. A truly heroic feat, good sir.
You always keep a very calm demeanour when people are attempting to exploit you, props to you.
excellent video. I love your calm and correct wording. I am awaiting a 2 TB device from e b a y . but now I have just seen your video. Well done to you, please keep showing things for what they are. I also ordered a blue tooth earpiece. it was supposed to work by vibrating sound into the bones in our jaw or skull. as a matter of fact, when it arrived, from e b a y , via ch, it was a big regular earpiece, with a hollow plastic tube, that aims directly into the ear canal, like a hearing aid. also it allows people in the same room to listen to the transmitted sound, which I bought this to avoid in the 1st place. thanks again. 10/10
Let the fools comment on your video, TH-cam will think more people are engaging with your video so it will suggest your videos to more people.
Yeah, it's big brain time
I've seen videos on TH-cam about how to make a HiFi speaker with a paper plate, cello tape and a penny. It amazes me the huge number of commenters that claim they made it work and it sounds better than a system by BOSE! I don't get why people do such videos or say such things. Also, I watch videos for entertainment, education and interest. So, longer is better for me. If I run out of time, I mark it for watch later.
I appreciated your video, Atomic Shrimp, and the time you took to make it. For me, keep em coming! Subscribed now!
Just found you love this channel and the intro, you seem like a very genuine guy. Your email scam video was gold that could be a series, but even if you didn’t I’d keep watching lol keep it up man
Very helpful video and uploaded at the perfect time. I just got a 2TB USB drive from Wish, not having the knowledge of what is a reasonable price for a USB that large. My dad handed me a 1TB external hard drive and told me its price. That's what brought me here. I immediately took all of my files and copied them back on to my mac. I had 5 years worth of photos, and hours of music that I had created myself. I also contacted support and got an immediate $15 refund (the money is supposed to arrive in 10-15 days.)
Thanks! I really like what your channel does. I've gone ahead and watched quite a few vids and even subscribed.
Copied them back from where?
@@P2Chill From the 2TB drive. Nothing appears to be affected.
@@alexsonic7 that's strange, every file on there should be corrupted if you copied it to and back from this drive, seeing as it doesn't actually have the amount of memory required needed to store those files. Have you checked all your files? Or how large was the total storage space that was used up by your files?
It's a Mac, wouldn't all of that be safely stored in your iCloud account? Btw, external hard drives rock. I have a 1Tb Seagate cutie that I keep all of my files on. I have 3 computers and can simply plug the External in to any of them, and have my files. Had to replace the HDD in my desktop in Oct. did not have to worry about storing my stuff elsewhere while I did the job, as it was never really on the HDD to begin with.....
1. I checked all my files and none are corrupt.
2. The reason I moved the files on to the drive was that iCloud was at 95-100% full.
3. It has some amount of storage on it but I didn't hit the cap where it started overwriting anything.
I can confirm, I bought already several so called 2Tb USB sticks from Wish. And ALL of them showed 2TB in the properties, but when I tried to put over 16Gb on them, they simple didn't work any more. And in ALL cases I requested a refund from Wish and got this.
The fake drives are still available in 2022 (well to be correct at least at the end of december 2021).
At least it's not less than a GB like the one Atomic Shrimp bought. Doesn't change the fact that it's a scam though.
Thank you. I've been telling people this for years! You are absolutely correct in every assessment you have made here.
To those complaining about video lengths....... don’t watch the whole video if it isn’t what you expect......move along, keep your butthurt comments to yourselves and do something else with your valuable time.
I read your full comment, *I*, but I'm a snowflake so I'll blame you for wasting my time! /s
El Grincho ???
Do people know youtube has a playback speed feature? Most youtube videos sound like there slow motion if you dont put it on 1.25 or 1.75 depending on the youtuber.
I enjoyed the video enormously. I normally just laugh out loud at potential scammers but it's great to see them having their time wasted and seeing them lose their temper.
Hey man, most people don't mind longer videos and most people also don't have any negative things to say about your scam stuff. It's nice to address some other concerns people have ofc, but don't let it get to you. Think of it this way, people are *exponentially* more likely to place a negative comment than to place a positive one. A lot more people then in the comments enjoy the video. Most people will watch it and be done, or watch it, leave a like, and be done. This is actually why Amazon reviews or any other website are flawed, in a sense. When most people get a product that works they don't go back to leave feedback, but if they get a product that's broken or malfunctioning they are muuuch more likely to leave negative feedback.
I leave a feedback all the time to avoid sounding like an angry dickhead in case somebody sees all the public messages I leave :p
I just saw an ad for this 2TB usb stick on facebook and warned anyone who shared it. I ran into some people who refused to believe me and actually got mad at me so strange. This thing must be a conspiracy with a lot of people in on it.
Certainly there are some aggressive shills out there, but don't underestimate the power of hopeful stupidity
With no commercials, you could make any video length you wanted and i'd still watch it. Trolls gonna Trollololololol. I love your vids. Keep at them at your leisure. ;)
Scammers with no con-troll
StockyPhil B that’s just bad
I HATE ad breaks. I literally don't watch videos if I cant skip an ad after 5 seconds. Thanks for great content.
uBlock origin, thank me later
ogyoutube
i use adblock, i never see any ads.
@@Daddy_Dagoth ... YES!! you changed someones life today. You have no idea. Im thanking you now. :)
Modern Humans have no attention spans.......
Absolutely 100% Correct... There is no way anyone has ever filled these drives to capacity! Great Video!
i remember i was going to search up your channel to binge watch but i forgot
Welcome back! Now's your chance
@@AtomicShrimp :D
Never seen a reply to a comment be hearted.
"the item is prefect !!!!!" Yeah, that totally doesn't look suspicious at all.
Awesome videos, both!! Watched just to late. My mother saw it and has I have an account, I had to buy. Being in IT I knew it was fake, but for the price I had to know and didn’t have anything to loose. As for the length of your videos, the information you get is the time worth!! 😉👍🏻
Watched this video and now I’m getting loads of adverts for very cheap 2TB drives from all sorts of dodgy companies. Thanks for pointing out it’s fake and for pointing out Wish is a dodgy site.
Apparently the steam deck has gained the ability to detect fake micro SD cards when a format is performed
Interesting. I imagine it must just be doing a write test
Just found your page. Love how thorough and informational you are. And just drops the hammer on everyone and everything. I mean even inkjet printers lol
0:38 Did you know that the inventor of the USB plug recently died?
When they lowered the coffin they had to raise it back up and turn it over before it would fit into the grave.... ;-)
Thank you for RE-going into details, even after both you and LinusTechTips proved all this in depth. Dont let the trolls get to you though.
Thank you for the explanation video AtomicShrimp. I appreciate your time and effort to inform the masses.
You are very honest and likable TH-camr. I'm really disappointed on how rude some people are in the comments. There just is so much trash people. But please continue doing you, i really enjoy your videos, more than i could of though. Keep the good work.
Just to make it clear for anyone interested. The fastest way to check whether the flash drive has the real capacity is to format it to NTFS, if there are a lot of damaged/inaccessible blocks the system will detect it as corrupt.
All these scams are based on the fact that FAT system writes files/folders from the begging of the flash and makes links between them and the only limit is the hard-coded value. In such a fashion it will write to the flash until the flash chip runs out of addresses, in that case you will start to get partially corrupt files or no files at all.
NTFS works a little different in the fact that when you create a partition, it writes information related to partition not only at the begging but at the end also. When you will create a 2TB partition, only the first part will be written to the flash, making it corrupt.
Now the assumption you made with factory calibration are not entirely correct. The flash drive consists of 2 main components: controller and flash memory (NAND memory chip usually). The controller has the job that ensures correct communication over USB protocol and addressing to the flash chip, some advanced ones might even have some diagnostics in case a lot of NAND chunks go bad. Now every controller has a small program for doing all these tasks written into it called firmware, all firmwares are provided by the manufacturer of the controller and they usually go as: type of nand memory + size (it also can be stored at the begging of NAND flash in some cases).
Why I told you all that is the fact that these flash drives are usually manufactured/assembled/programmed in China. The problem is that those firmwares got leaked and pretty much everyone can reprogram a controller. There are even tons of tools that let you do that very easy, most likely gotten from the factories where they program the flash drive. Now there is the possibility as you said that a lot of chunks are damaged, however in case when the NAND flash is working, the changing of firmware requires you to find the serial number of controller with that flash combination.
I'm not sure you are right that formatting to NTFS will do it. I will put that to the test
@@AtomicShrimp let me know the result, I have done that with several fake flash drives however they were very small (64 to 256 MB)
Given how crap branded flash memory is, I never understood why people want to buy UNbranded flash memory! :)
Imagine not only believing that a 2 TB USB from Wish would cost less and be the same size as the average 16 GB USB you would find at your local electronics store but also being so delusional that you will say that the product worked perfectly, which may lead to more people buying the product and getting scammed.
I bought a 512GB PNY flash drive on Amazon for $80 for my last birthday in early 2019. That was marked half off of its original price, and the best deal I could find at the time.
It amazes me that people are so quick to throw out anecdotes such as "Use GParted" or "Device Properties" to check the "actual" capacity, yet many of them admit to not having watched the entire video or simply complained about its length (which speaks volumes about their attention spans anyway). I guess it's quicker to throw up a comment than to simply skip to your 4-minute video with the fake micro SD card, in which you actually used GParted and it saw it as a 512GB device.
Regardless, very nice work on these tests!
Seriously, I love your work. ya know I was trying to pack tonight, got a little distracted. Take your subscription and your thumbs ups Manuel/Manfried/Mange
I may be an idiot but I bought 2. It was a buy 1 get 1 free. I am nowhere as educated as the youtuber so forgive my ignorance. The first thing I did was format both drives. I then installed a movie to see if it would play back. The movie played just fine so I transferred more almost 2 terabytes in movies. The cheap thumb drive said its capacity was 1.9 terabytes and it seems to work just fine. Now I am worried because I needed the space on my computer and thought this thumb drive would be a safe backup.......... I went back and checked to see if the movies worked. They do not. I cant believe that I fell for a scam. I trusted the thumb drive after formatting and testing it. I didn't copy the movies to the thumb drive, I moved them and now they are all gone. I lost my stuff but you gained a fan.
I am sorry to hear about that - and I am sure there must be a lot of people out there who have suffered loss of data for the same reasons.
If you haven't re-used the empty capacity on your computer hard drive, it may be possible for an 'undelete' utility (like this one: sourceforge.net/projects/kickassundelete/ ) to recover some of the files that previously resided there, because deleting files from disks usually only comprises removing their catalog entry, not actually wiping the space where they are stored.
(there is of course no hope of doing this on the fake 2tb drives, as the data copied there was lost before it got there)
@@AtomicShrimp thanks for doing the videos you do. I wish I had found your site earlier. As we say in Texas , oil well.
Mate I want your every vids to be 10 mins. Keep it up! 👍🏻❤️
Do me and others a favor and don't listen to the crack pots who think you are being dishonest or don't know what you are doing. Some people are just driven by their internal egos and feed them by trying to make themselves appear superior. I've been an IT, or was anyway, for over 25 years. If I thought for a second you did not perform adequate testing or did not know the risks I would, well....just stop watching. Keep up the good work man. AE
Once an IT, always an IT!
@@soulreaver555 Funny guy !!
So, did people actually complain that the video is 11 minutes? And that it's potentially exploited for monetary gain? Why?
Beats me
I think these videos on scams and viruses are very important today and I hope that over time more people see them. I wouldn't consider anybody in my own family stupid, but I have an uncle who got scammed and paid a few hundred bucks when popup windows told him that his computer was infected (way over a decade ago), my mom told me around 5 years ago that she had a yearly plan with "Microsoft Customer Support" for their small business, and my youngest brother bought a 1TB hard drive for $60 a few years back. Fortunately, they had me... Got my uncle and my brother's money back in full. I wasn't able to get all of my mom's money back because she was giving money to that scam for an embarassing amount of time, but I bleached her computer and helped her reinstall all of her stuff on a new laptop since the one she was using was due for an upgrade anyhow.
The problem is that this technology came on so fast. Intelligent people who had never had any use for a computer and very little training if any in their lives nearly overnight lived in a world where they're surrounded by them. I always liken it to most people's relationship with their cars. Everybody knows how to pump gas into them. Some people might even know how to change the oil and a tire. But almost none of them understand how anything works under the hood.
Unfortunately, preying on ignorance is sometimes even easier than preying on stupidity.
I watched another TH-cam video not long ago about the same kind of deal. Some tech reviewer bought a "supposed" 2TB flash drive for a ridiculously low price. It tested fine on software but then he disassembled it. Inside the thing was jerry rigged, and those 2TB of storage turned out to be a 2GB micro card. I think he paid $29 for it. Walgreens is selling 16GB flash drives right now for $7.99.
Whats happening with all the people claiming that the cheap drives are real is either:
1) They actually bought the expensive and actually real ones but have poor listening and reading comprehension skills.
Or 2) They are lying or don't actually know what theyre talking about. Dunning Kruger striking again.
You'd be surprised how far people will go to make it seem like they weren't scammed. All to prop up their fragile ego.
I dont get the 11min thing enough. I love long form content. If they cant stand 11m they should just go back to tiktok or just watch shorts.
Maybe also goto their doctor for adhd meds as their attention span is not normal.
I don't know... Being unable to leave a negative review if you claim a refund sounds pretty scammy for any marketplace
Yeah that sounds intentional as fuck
This item is prefect! Congrats, that's one achievements you can get during school years.
Good video , I worked in a semiconductor fab for over 13 years for a household name, The over provisioning of flash ram is used in most devices containing flash ram not just flash memory cards/usb/ssd devices and the flash controller in devices with the original firmware doesn't just map out the bad blocks at the factory but will dynamically test and retire blocks as they become unreliable with excessive write cycles... There's a good chance that unless you can find the exact firmware for the combination of flash ram and controller this 'anti aging' function will be also lost ... Also on cheap non big brand but 'real' Usb/SSD/as cards/ drives the over provisioning is almost always lower meaning they fail sooner as there are less spare blocks...this simply makes them much cheaper to make.....simply As you put it if it looks too cheap to be true ..it is.
*spots own comment at **0:27*
Still would not trust poking that USB stick into my PC tho...
Thanks for taking the risk... Atomic Shrimp is our tech condom
Ew. Gross.
@@AtomicShrimp I mean... hey... be glad you are the condom... could have been something worse like a fleshlight or buttplug :>
Unless you are into those things that is...
what even
@@mlgpro2241 Certain things do not require questions.
Aroop Roelofs It’s easy to deal with malware just load a live Linux disk. The only thing I would be concerned about is that it’s a usb killer
On top of having unreliable storage, reprogramming these drives really isn't viable since they are most likely marked up from the msrp of the same drive sold legitimately while remaining "a good deal" for the fake capacity. And when you factor in the time dedication to reprogram it, you're better off just buying a legit drive from a reputable vendor.
I think he means for people who already bought one without knowing (I did and I reformatted it and it seems to work fine, but I won't be using it for anything important)
I have just had an advert from “go groupie” advertising 1T for £9.99 or 2 T for £15.99, guess I will give that one a huge swerve. Thanks guys from an oap with what one would call fairly knowledgeable but is always on the lookout for a genuine good deal. I thought it may be a genuine deal as it was from a reputable company lol
Good on ya, mate. Didn't see the original video but it's good you're getting the information out there.
H2TestW is a great program - had to get it when I suspected an SD card I bought from an online auction wasn't the genuine article. Turns out it wasn't and the guy tried to bald-face lie about it until I sent photos of the card compared with photos of a genuine one and a copy of the test results to the site's administrators - that ended the argument abruptly.
It's left me paranoid about things like that and I won't submit feedback for any USB/SD memory I buy until after I've done a full write/read test to confirm capacity and speed class - so thanks to that one dick, honest vendors have to _wait_ to receive positive feedback.
Love getting a add for Wish on this video lmao
Yeah! Fuck them haters man! Just do your thing! Even if the guy wanted to bring out a lengthy video for monetization, so what? Your content is genuine on educating your viewers and I appreciate that man!
Great video as for me I was able to get a refund from eBay for one of these flash drives.
I'm just happy the seller was friendly and compliant.
Yet in this case I'd rather be safe than sorry.
Some things I just don't buy online, memory is one. I go to a local tech store, I pay a reasonable price for a product I can take back if it is faulty.
Reputable vendor, wise.
0:06 Yeah, the item is very PREFECT
the storage is gonna give you up its also gonna let you down
The fact that wish doesn’t allow negative reviews if you return the item sucks. AliExpress is better because you can still leave reviews no matter what.
Great video as always. Check out that like/dislike ratio as well.
EDIT: Fixed wording mistake.
I'm ALWAYS suspicious of perfect scores on any website. Though I didn't realize negative reviews could be filtered by such an insidious protocol. I just assumed there wasnt any legit review system in place (Although I have seen comment boxes that simply dont transmit any data at all, the buttons dont have any script behind them) I'm actually slightly annoyed at the fact that scammers don't even bother to make their review good but not perfect, to make them slightly more believable. It's a silent testament to how easily some people are fooled.
Glad that you're not a sellout to monetization!
This is why I prefer Amazon, they have massive rules these days on scammers and fake reviews; just last month Amazon caused the arrest of 270 scammers and also shut down nearly over a 100 account for making fake reviews. Thus, they are a bit better about keeping an eye on things, EBay tends to not watch anything until it starts to get really bad...like when someone try to sale the country of New Zealand for a dollar or when people sale food that was “eaten by a celebrity.”
Well, let me say a big THANK YOU . I was seriously considering buying one of these flash drives, thinking it would be the safer option to use for my close to 1TB of files on by laptop . I've used 2TB external hard drives before, but the problem with those is even if you don't drop them, they still run down pretty quickly and start that dreaded " clicking " . And where I live, the electronics repair shops, all claim that they can't fix them or that it would be less costly to just consider the files on them LOST and just buy another hard drive, which will probably do the same . I'm tired of starting all over with a new hard drive . Any suggestions ?
Make sure to buy a SSD External Hard Drive, an Solid State Drive uses flash memory not spinning disks so they are more durable and resistant to physical damage, and they are also faster.
1. BUY
2. REFUND
3. REPROGRAM
3.5 -NEVER MIND YOUR MORAL PRINCIPLES-
4. SELL
5. REPEAT FOR UNLIMITED MONEY
I should note that not all sellers of tech are scammers. I've never used Wish or Alibaba, but in the last year I did purchase a aftermarket proprietary fan for an all-in-one HP desktop system that is about 12 years old but is still great for my everyday needs. The fan was making more and more noise over the course of the year and then just completely stopped working. I was only able to get it to work temporarily by cleaning it and throwing some oil on the bearings, but after months of grinding I knew that wouldn't last long. The problem was, it's a legacy machine and HPs website didn't even offer up any of the Mobo or BIOS software anymore. You don't even want to know the story of what I had to go through to find the BIOS update in hopes to get a 256GB SSD that I wasted $40 on working in it (which I never was able to do even after flashing the BIOS... the machine is just too old to use SSD directly on the Mobo).
Only one seller that I could find had a replacement fan. I found them on Alibaba, but not trusting that site I kept searching. It turns out the exact same seller also had the item listed on Amazon, albeit for about $7 more. Shipping on either site was estimated at 2 to 3 months. I just had to cross my fingers, hope that I wasn't being scammed and hope my fan kept working until then.
To my surprise, only abouit 10 days later I got it, immediately swapped it out, and now it's been about 8 months with my computer working like brand new and silent without all the noise of grinding bearings. It cost me about $16 shipped on Amazon. It would have cost around $8 or $9 from Alibaba, but since I was already taking a chance I decided that it was less risk through Amazon. I'm virtually poor, and I'm the cheapest SOB you know. That was a very hard decision to make, and knowing that it turned out fine to this day it still haunts me that I might have screwed myself out of $7 or $8 by not just buying it on Alibaba. :)
My hubby is doing this...buying crap from Wish. I told him that the pictures are never what shows up! Its bubble gum machine junk. Sure. They are cheap, but what you're getting can not only ruin a computer, have faulty wiring that causes fires, break after 10 minutes because they make it like that on purpose! But the chemicals used to make the plastics, 'shmetal' (shitty metal or fake metal), paints, toys with oily residue & toxic smell, even clothing or materials we sleep in/on can be highly flammable or contain carcinogenic chemicals like mercury. This can also cause adverse reactions and episodes such as COPD & asthma attacks.
This stuff might as well be treated like a drug syndicate.
another question for write test.
can you do a dd if=/dev/urandom on linux to test the true storage space of the fake device or will it still be tricked?
I tried that and it just seems to obediently write the output files - I think whichever way you write to these things, the action of writing to the flash memory is always delegated to the controller in the media, so any method will result in files being dumped into the directory (and their contents into the void)
Excellent. They almost got me. Thank you.
Hello Atomic Shrimp, I really wish I have found this video of yours 2 years sooner but I'm afraid I was too late. the thing is I already moved worth 250gb movies in my newly bought fake 2tb flash drive and when I tried to play the video I transferred, it won't play anymore even if I move it back to my desktop. I'm about to dispose this flash drive but before that I just want to know if there is still a way to make the videos I transferred playable again. hope you can still leave a reply in my comment.
If you moved the file, the contents will have been destroyed I'm afraid, unless you have a copy in some other place.
Sorry
Fabulous follow-up! Thank you! Brilliant.
I mean, look on the bright side. They sell these cheap usb sticks for a low price and not for the price of a real 2TB usb. I unfortunately did buy one of these and didn't realise it was fake. I still have it.
They're still scamming you, since its usually a 2gb stick, wich you could buy a real one for one fourth of what they're selling you
So is the SanDisk 1TB Ultra Dual Drive Luxe 3.2 USB Type-C Flash Drive 400MBs UK, retailing at about £90 in 2024 OK?
it surprises me that you can somehow reprogram a usb drive to show whatever 'capacity' you want it to show.
Me too - I initially assumed these devices were internally simpler than they actually are
they can do the same with graphics cards selling £500 cards for less then £100. If you plug it in it says its the £500 pound card and will work(ish) until you try to run a game and then it will crash, or it just wont work at all.
Use chip genius to determine what controllers are used
The easiest way to find these is to get one with a full USB connector and either see through the case or disassemble it. Find the flash chip info and put it on Google. If the capacity does not match what was advertised, it's 100% confirmed fake.
If it contains 1 flash chip despite advertising 1TB or more, it has 80% chance of being fake. (Flash chips have a rectangular shape and are much larger than the controller chips.)
If it's a unibody design and it claims to have 1TB+ capacity, it's 99.9999% fake.
it seems atomic shrimp makes his videos to inform uninformed people who are most likely old people who fall for these things, unable to do what you described. but your comment seems like something fun for a technologically competent person to try at home.
@@Abby_Liu
I couldn't agree with you more -- it's true that my way of finding counterfeit USB sticks isn't something that can be done with everyone.
So here's a good way to avoid these things:
1.
How i can reprogram that flashdrive, to higher capacity?
I'm not sure of the exact process, but why would you want to?
So brand name whom would be best to buy an SD card over 500 gigs and what would be proper money for it?
everything u said was spot on.
Nicely put 🙂👌
GrandadsOtherChannel Oy! Cheers gramps!
;)
Coming back to this video after so long, I'm gonna throw a long shot and see if you'll notice this. Would it be possible to salvage what remains of the overwritten wsiac file (perhaps by inserting hex values at the end to match the end value for an mp4 file) and then see the results? Thanks.
Just ignore the people who talk about the time limit. People who complain about that have little understanding of how TH-cam monetization works.
They hear so many TH-camrs talk about the 10 minute mark as a joke for more money. But, they don't realise that you can only make more money with a 10 minute video if you add midrolls.
I bought one of those to see what was up. In the comments on wish people were saying it worked so it clearly could store some files. I left it one night having burstcoin plotfiles being created on it. Came back the next day and it was dead. So I couldn't find out how big it really was. Inside mine was a green circuit board with an unbranded chip on it.
Why would anyone complain about video length being over 10min? Its just more good content!
Is it even possible to buy legit memory or battery on Wish?
I wouldn't even try
I doubt it. I'll buy all sorts of cheap things from Wish and similar sites, but if I'm buying stuff that I'm wanting to rely on - like memory or good-quality high-capacity batteries, I'll usually only deal with vendors I trust - reputable firms, not virtual suitcases-on-card-tables at an online bazaar - and/or buy brands I know and trust. Even then, I test what I get - "trust, but verify"...
The music at the end is quiet nice, did you make it yourself.
I have a 2TB drive, it’s about 20cm by 10cm in length so quite large, and quite expensive, NOT a small little thing for like 2 dollars, idk what people are thinking
Some exist, but the cheap ones are scams
I got one for free as an addon from aliexpres to my order, and on write test i was konda suprised, the speed was pretty fast, but the capacity at wich it started to lose data was about 24gb
Way to enlighten brother! Of course, the real take away - SHAME ON YOU WISH! :D