According to some sources almost 90% of all large capacity USB flash drives sold on eBay are fakes. That is a scary statistics. What is a fake USB flash drive? It is a flash drive that reports the capacity that is larger than the physical size of the drive. For example, the 2GB drive can report itself as an 8GB drive, 256MB drive can report as 2GB, and etc.

Here is my story. I was on the market to buy a large capacity USB drive (preferably not less than 8GB). I installed a new car deck with the USB input and wanted to use that USB flash drive as a source of music and audio books that I listen when driving to and from work. So, I browsed eBay and found a listing for an 8GB flash drive which, as reported by the seller, was made by Samsung (Samsung makes the best flash memory). Since the seller had high reputation and his sales count was over 9,000 and because the listing said that the item was located in the United Kingdom, I decided to buy the unit.

So, I pad 53 Euros, which amounted to about 83CAD and a couple of weeks later received the drive in a letter mail from… Hong Kong. Sh*&%%t I told myself, didn’t the seller list the UK as the item location? I came home, plugged in the drive into my laptop, checked the properties of the drive and smiled when I saw that the drive was working and reported itself to be 8GB in size.

Luckily, I did not rush and post the positive feedback right away. Later that day I started copying music to the drive and was very surprised when I saw that ALL the music files got corrupted once I copied more than 2GB to the drive. I formatted the drive and tried copying the files again only to see the same result.

At that time I did not know anything about fake drives. So, I started researching the Internet and found lots of info about it. The best post was made by one of the eBay sellers and you can read it here: http://reviews.ebay.com/BEWARE-of-FAKE-1GB-2GB-4GB-8GB-USB-Flash-Drives-on-eBay_W0QQugidZ10000000001236200

In short, the seller from whom I bought the flash drive committed a fraud selling me a fake USB flash drive. So, here is what I did:

I wrote a short email to the seller saying that if I will not get a refund within 5 days I will report him to eBay and PayPal, and I will initiate a charge back on my Visa (I financed the purchase with the Vista card). The guy responded immediately trying to weasel his way out of the situation. But I was very persistent and he issued a full refund. The funny thing is that he did not even ask me to return the drive. He must be making some good money defrauding people on eBay.

So, if you bought a fake USB flash drive, know that the person who sold you the drive committed fraud and that you are entitled to a refund. The next question is what to do with the fake drive if it is left in your possession? Is it possible to use it? The answer is yes, it is quite possible to make the drive work properly and I will explain how to do it in my next post.

1. Sorry to hear you are having trouble buying USB Flash Drives.

   I have now bought 2 X 8GB USB Flash Drives – on eBay and had no problem.

   Both the drives came from China, delivered promptly.

   I guess you pays your money . . . and takes your pick.

   Posted by David | January 10, 2008, 5:33 am

2. It’s OK, really. Actually, I now have a free 2GB USB drive. How? Very simple – I told the seller that if he wanted the drive shipped to him, he had to send me money to cover the postal fees. Guess what, he never sent me the money, so now I own a free 2GB USB flash drive.

   Nikolai

   Posted by Nikolai | February 20, 2008, 10:43 pm

3. I bought one the guy said he had refunded me… pack of lies.. these are gangsters ripping thousands of people off… need to get them arrested… tell the police…

   Posted by ian | March 19, 2008, 10:27 pm

4. Here is how to fix your (^_^our) free flash drives:

   http://caprolibra.com/B10g/images/20080410-usb-flash-fake-capacity/USB-Flash-Drive-Scam-Hotfix.html

   Posted by Anonymous | April 13, 2008, 8:15 am

5. I bought 2… and the seller’s eBay account closed right after. so there is no chance for me to get my money back…
   I am more concerned about how to make the drive work properly. Is it possible to make it show the real capacity when plugged in? So maybe i can still be happy and just pretend that i bought a 1GB drive.

   Posted by Jane | June 19, 2008, 3:51 pm

6. hey niki!your so fine…..

   hey man?where’s the fix info for the fake 8Gb usb drives?i got 7 of them!!thanks

   Posted by donny | July 28, 2008, 1:13 am

7. Where to download Alcor tools to fix fake USB flash drives

   Directions:
   Download & install
   Alcor UFD Manufacture Programm (AU9386 V1.10)
   To identify proper VID & PID (bottom left corner)

   Download AlcorMP (080829) AU6981/AU6983/AU6986
   OR
   one of the other AlcorMP versions, according to your chipset
   Install Proper VID & PID with LoadDriver.exe
   Low Level Format with AlcorMP.exe
   Try each AlcorMP version until one recognizes your drive

   My Results
   Chipset:
   Alcor au6983hl
   SPECTEK FBNL52AHGK3WG-AT
   memory is identical to
   MT29F16G08MAA
   VID 058F
   PID 9381
   16GB faulty drive becomes 4GB good drive

   Entire Alcor shared directory:
   http://www.4shared.com/dir/10145698/9e4ada91/sharing.html

   Link to each file:
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69061840/5f8ec858/Alcor-AU9381-V1100.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69061996/2817917/ALCOR-AU9386-V110.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69061602/df72417a/ALCOR_AU9382_UFDTool.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69061614/2f0ad50e/ALCOR_AU9385.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69062234/880b0be/AlcorMP_080228__AU6984.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69062341/3669b8c1/AlcorMP_080424__AlcorMP_AU698X.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69062160/70dc3ebb/AlcorMP-080829.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69062583/705fea53/AlcorMP-UFD-621.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69062457/c35e3a30/AlcorMP_6_18.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69060926/59c9c7b9/AlcorTools.html
   http://www.4shared.com/file/69062670/6c88197f/AU6980-6981_v61504.html

   Alternate download location, all above files in one RAR
   http://www.zshare.net/download/50678688947a35ad/
   Filelist:
   Alcor-AU9381-V1.1.0.0.rar
   ALCOR-AU9386-V1.10.rar
   AlcorMP(08.02.28)_AU6984.rar
   AlcorMP(080424)_AlcorMP_AU698X.rar
   AlcorMP-080829.zip
   AlcorMP-UFD-6.21.rar
   AlcorMP_6_18.rar
   AlcorTools.rar
   ALCOR_AU9382_UFDTool.rar
   ALCOR_AU9385.rar
   AU6980-6981_v6.15.04.zip

   Posted by carlton | October 30, 2008, 6:46 pm

8. Hello Nikolai,

   I bought a fake drive also. On your last post you said it was quite possible to make the drive work? Can you please post how to fix the drive? Thanks.

   Sam

   Posted by Samuel Barillas | November 11, 2008, 2:15 pm

9. So, if you bought a fake USB flash drive, know that the person who sold you the drive committed fraud and that you are entitled to a refund. The next question is what to do with the fake drive if it is left in your possession? Is it possible to use it? The answer is yes, it is quite possible to make the drive work properly and I will explain how to do it in my next post

   u never did post how to do it with the fake usb drive

   Posted by ad | November 15, 2008, 6:30 am

10. how tu unformat faked usb disk?
    i see 8 GB, but really work only 2GB …
    How to unformat this ?..

    Posted by suki | November 24, 2008, 8:12 am

11. If you are caught trying to figure out what to do with fake flash, you should visit

    http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/

    It is the main site for information on fake – false capacity drives. You will find other sites linked – all part of the FrankenFlash Project that is fighting against fake flash devices.

    There is detailed information on fixing fake flash – and known solutions at the fixfakeflash site that is linked in.

    Posted by InspectorTech | December 31, 2008, 9:26 pm

12. Hello. And Bye. :)

    Posted by kookimebux | February 1, 2009, 1:59 pm

13. I used the AlcorMP. It says too many bad blocks. Now nothing can be done with that pen drive. On clicking the drive it says please insert a disk in the drive.

    Posted by Aniruddha Mohod | March 3, 2009, 7:49 am