A report reveals that they may be tricking you with fake USB flash drives and microSD cards
USB flash drives and microSD cards have become key pieces at a time when storage is essential for everyone. However, a recent report from the German data recovery company CBL has reported a large drop in quality of these devices, especially with regard to the NAND chips used in their manufacture.
To contextualize a little previously, explain that these chips are a key part in USB flash drives, memory cards, SSDs, and other digital storage devices. Simply put, they are made up of memory cells that permanently store information, meaning they retain data even when they are not receiving power.
In addition to their storage capacity, they are also known for their read and write speeds, making them perfect for applications that require fast access to data, such as SSDs used in computers and servers.
Based on this and returning to the report, CBL has found NAND chips from brands such as Hynix, Sandisk and samsung that did not pass quality standards and were resold and reused.
CBL
Defective NAND chips invade the storage device market
They comment that, Although these chips continue to work, their storage capacity is quite questionable, especially if we talk about the long term..
The CEO of CBL Datenrettung GmbH, Conrad Heinicke, has highlighted that many of these defective USB sticks were found in promotional gifts and some “branded” products, suggesting that this low quality is not limited to just generic products.
CLB
“When we opened defective USB sticks last year, we found an alarming number of poor quality memory chips, with reduced capacity and with the manufacturer’s logo removed from the chip,” he explains.
This is something that has been previously verified. In 2022, a generic 30TB M.2 external SSD could be purchased for about $18 at Walmart. The reality is that it contained two 512 MB SD cards glued to the board and its firmware It had been modified to report that each one was 15 TB, when, as you see, that is not the case.
All these factors have led CBL to warn very seriously about the quality of these products and the importance of the user being very cautious when purchasing these devices.
