Think You Might Have a Fake Flash Drive? Test it with ValiDrive for Windows

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EscherehcsE

I don't think I have any fake flash drives, but they're showing up more often on Amazon. (Did you buy one of those no-name 1 terabyte flash drives for 15 or 20 dollars?)

Steve Gibson has just finished his nifty little freeware utility that should be able to tell you if that flash drive is legit or fake. (There are a few other freeware programs that also promise to do that, but Steve had to put his own twist on the issue. It never hurts to have another option to solve a problem!)

ValiDrive is for Windows only (Win 7 and newer). If you're running Linux or Mac, there are reports that ValiDrive runs well in a virtual machine. I'm not sure if it also runs in WINE; Maybe the ValiDrive FAQ page will answer that question soon.

Note that ValiDrive only checks for the fake/legit issue. It does *NOT* test *all* of the drive's blocks for readability and writeability. (It spot-checks 576 locations on the drive, but not the entire drive.)

Steve's site has some information pages that explain the program in more detail. However, he's still working on the FAQ page, so you might want to revisit the FAQ page in a few days.

https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm

EscherehcsE

When I want to test a new flash drive to make sure the entire drive is good regarding reading and writing, I usually use "H2testw" and "USB Flash Drive Tester". (I'll run H2testw first, which overwrites data but doesn't destroy formatting. Then I'll run USB Flash Drive Tester, which overwrites data *and* destroys formatting. After that, I'll have to reformat the flash drive. I'm a fan of using Rufus for most of my flash drive formatting.)

This link mentions 11 programs. I've only used less than half of them, so I can't vouch for most of them. I only included this link as something for further research: https://www.geckoandfly.com/22803/detect-fake-usb-flash-drives-sd-cards-ssd-disk/

Warning! - These programs often overwrite data and may even destroy the formatting of the flash drive. So back up any important files from the drive before testing! (ValiDrive should be safe for your data, but I'd back up any important data even when using ValiDrive.)

EscherehcsE

One funny thing about those fake flash drives on Amazon are the ratings. The ratings for the fake flash drives ranged from 3 to 4 stars (out of 5 stars). That tells me that for most of the reviews, either the reviews are fake, or the buyers didn't perform comprehensive testing of the drives.

TACOC4T471
One or the other I guess
EscherehcsE

A Columbus Day, Monday morning bump. I'd like to get a few more people to notice this before it sinks to the bottom of the OTF ocean...

EscherehcsE

One last bumparooni...

EscherehcsE

Here's a VERY short YouTube video of an earlier dev version of ValiDrive (no audio). This appears to be a fairly fast, approx 128 GB drive. (The slow flash drives can take a *long* time.):

Here's a longer one, but only in Russian:

EscherehcsE

It's starting to get some traction. It was picked up by TechSpot, although it's only a word-for-word cut-and-paste of Steve's words...

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/7571-validrive.html

EscherehcsE

Just a couple of followup items.

Firstly, here's a clip from last week's "Security Now" podcast where Steve announces the release of ValiDrive:

Secondly, I just looked at the show notes for tonight's podcast. Steve mentions that ValiDrive is *not* WINE-compatible (drats). So unless he adds WINE compatibility in a future version, ValiDrive will be a Windows only app.

EscherehcsE

The program is spreading. I guess this is Russian?

EscherehcsE

This is one of the big reasons why you can't necessarily trust Amazon.com reviews:

One of the Validrive testers recently bought a flash drive from Amazon, and the drive turned out to be fake, as tested by ValiDrive. So, this tester posted a negative review on Amazon stating it was fake and including a ValiDrive screenshot.

So, what did Amazon do? Amazon claimed that their investigation indicated that the drive was authentic, and Amazon deleted the negative review.

Full story on Page 2 of Steve's show notes for his latest podcast:

https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-945-Notes.pdf

EscherehcsE

ValiDrive is a very useful utility!

Itz_Griffin
We get it. You can stop posting now
EscherehcsE
6r1441n wrote:
We get it. You can stop posting now

Well, my mouse finger *is* getting kind of tired...

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