Beware of Fake USB Pen Drives

Fake goods are a big problem especially in clothing and fashion, but they are also problem in computer storage – particularly in the realm of memory sticks (otherwise known as pen drives or usb sticks). Manufactured largely in the East, fake pen drives are increasingly common in the UK.

There are a lot of cheap and fake pen drives in circulation, many are of extremely poor quality and will stop working after a short while. My advice is to spend your money wisely and buy your pen drive from a reputable supplier. You may see a decent Sandisk pen drive in PC World for £20, and the exact same drive on a market stall for £5, but the difference is one will be the genuine article while the other one will be fake. Sure, they may look exactly the same, but the electronics underneath will be completely different. At Data Clinic we’ve seen may fake pen drives, unfortunately these fake items are nearly always impossible to work with and recover the data from because the memory chips are of such poor quality that it is no longer possible to access them electronically.

How To Check If You’ve Got A Fake Pen Drive ?

The short answer is you can’t. Once you’ve peeled away the stickers and opened the casing you’ll be looking at a PCB with some circuitry and a memory chip or two. But unless you know what memory chips you are expecting to see there is no quick way to tell if you’ve a genuine or fake device.

So What’s The Best Option ?

The best way to ensure that you’re buying a genuine product is to buy from a trusted source. Amazon and PC World are both trusted shops that will have genuine products, I advise you steer well clear of eBay where if often difficult to validate how genuine a product is.