This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I'm glad the article linked to this one:
because that has been going on for at least 15 years (that I know of). When ebay was at it's peak it was impossible to buy a good USB stick there because it seemed you could only get 512 mb sticks disguised as 32 gb sticks with a price in between the two and coming directly from China.
You get what you measure holds true today as it always has.
Never cheap out on data storage unless you're okay losing what you store. Always get an independently well reviewed product from a known band
This doesn't help with counterfeit though. So many conterfeit usb thumsticks these days. They're might be obvious for tech-savvy users to identify (blue usb jack but slow ass usb 2.0 speed, or weird typo in device name), but most person probably wouldn't notice they're using conterfeit devices.
Sounds like part of the issue might be that your not-so-cheap storage might still be using the cheap components...
There's plenty of stuff that masquerades as trusted brands, ends up mixed in the inventory of a certain large etailer and is actually fake crap under the hood. There's also the real brands' merch that can be good but make a run with cheap components in the name of cutting costs, or with flakey firmware that may cost reliability for a slight uptick in performance. A certain brand of SSD had the latter issue years ago, and it's looks like there's a lawsuit against Western Digital for that currently.
Ah yeah, I should probably have added to not buy it from Amazon, due to the mixed inventory issues you're referring to. At least in my country, this doesn't seem to be an issue with our other retailers.
Not good news if you can't even trust the big brands from anyone though. Samsung and SanDisk were always my go to, but I'm reading both have had recent quality control issues
A lot of times you only use a flash drive to move files from one device to another, in which case if the quality matches the price then it might not be a big deal
I guess that would fall under the "don't care if you lose the data" scenario.
Though even then, I'd be annoyed at my time being wasted if I couldn't copy the file off again
I mean caveat emporium applies here and if you want cheap storage from Amazon sponsored cheap ass flash drive or when microcenter branded drivers by the checkout, those have always been the risks.
And honestly, as long as you understand that cheap shit is cheap components, I really don't have a problem with this since this saves these chips from being instant e-waste and puts it to use.
Still got a handful of these no-name microcenter SD and USB drives going strong along with those that have up the ghost.
Did you mean caveat emptor (buyer beware), or do you refer to Amazon as caveat emporium (the beware market)?
What is a strategy against it?
I bought an m.2 drive enclosure. It's bulky, but so damn fast. Plus it recycles old drives I've had lying around. Love it.
Link?
Not OP but get Orico, they make good stuff.
Whatever enclosure you get, verify that it doesn't have a jmicron chipset, they're garbage.
Don't buy no brand cheap crap from amazon
Or indeed anything from Amazon. Even if it's branded there's still a chance it's a complete fake.
Ironically, these days, if you want to avoid fake crap Amazon is only good for books... (but it is still Amazon)
It’s worse in that regard too. I’ve had to turn to Abe a few times because they didn’t have something, and I’ve also started to notice that Amazon doesn’t always have the cheapest price. Prime is useless for books most of the time too.
I really miss the days where you could get used books for <$1 or so plus shipping. Lots of penny books.
I bought most of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time hardcover. I already had some of them. The ones I got from Amazon are different. No embossing on the front cover. Side fonts vary (though to be fair, even the others that I already had do a bit of this).
They all have the original art and say first edition, but I'm skeptical and wouldn't be surprised if they are bootlegs. At least I'm not collecting them expecting them to be worth a lot and a "fake" book is still readable.
I tried to get my niece a book from there for Christmas, and all they had were some ratty used copies.
It's genuinely amazing how far they've gone downhill.
So this is how I could buy a 2 TERAbyte usb thumb drive from Ali Express for a few bucks?
You're saying I should throw it away, right?
Because I would never be able to read the data that I thought was written to it?
