Find out if an USB device is fake with free ValiDrive app for Windows
Fake USB devices continue to be a problem. These devices claim to have higher storage capacities than they actually have. These devices are sold in many different places: from Chinese online shops to Amazon or eBay.
While there are some best practices to avoid fakes, including being cautious when an USB drive is very cheap for the storage space it has or has a large storage space that is not even available yet, it is difficult otherwise to find out if an offer is legitimate or a fake.
Software comes to the rescue, but only after you have made the purchase. In 2018, we reviewed eight tools to detect fake storage devices. Several of the programs are still available.
ValiDrive
ValiDrive is a new free tool to test USB drives. It "conducts a data preserving, 576-region spot-check to test the readability, writability, and true storage presence of any drive of any size connected to any Windows' USB port".
The tool has been created by Gibson Research Corporation, known for other high quality tools such as InControl, DNS Benchmark, or InSpectre.
Usage is simple. Download the application from the Gibson website and run it afterwards. It does not need to be installed and is ready right away.
Select the "check USB drive" button in the interface. Once done, insert the USB drive into a port on the computer. ValiDrive should recognize it at this point. Activate "Validate this drive" and wait for the validation to run its course.
Note that it may take some time to complete a scan, as read and write operations are run on the drive to test its validity.
The scan is visualized using colors:
- Green indicates validated areas of the drive.
- Blue is for read errors.
- Yellow shows write errors.
- Red highlights no storage areas (in other words, fake storage areas).
All green is the best result. USB drives with red areas are fake, as they report more storage than they actual have.
Once done, ValiDrive creates and displays a final report. The report lists additional information about the scan, including the declared and validated drive size, and information about the read and write operations.
For most users, it may be enough to take a look at the color coded map of the drive, as it reveals whether its advertised size is the actual size.
Closing Words
Tools like ValiDrive can only be used after a purchase has been made. They may come in handy at other times, for instance when you buy used devices or need to verify USB devices regularly as part of your job.
All in all, it is a tiny mighty handy tool to have in your arsenal. One downside is that it is only available for Windows.
Other than that, it is excellent and a definitive recommendation.
Now You: how often do you use USB storage devices? Did you ever buy a device that was fake? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
I should have included this earlier bit I did not have a up to date url as I have been using a much older version of this for years.
https://h2testw.org/
Simple, works and gives you some read and write rates as well. Don’t mind telling you it really brought home how slow my older “USB 2” pen drives were.
Same for some “USB 3” drives. The interface may be UBS3 or USB3-compatible, but the speeds would not even saturate a USB2 connector.
Works interestingly well on SD cards. Many are not more than a hair faster than their UHC class ratings. Still usefully faster than spinning drives when you don’t need bulk transfers, simply due to access times being less than a 10th for short random/spread reads.
ct magazine approved iirc.
Incidentally, as of Saturday (tomorrow) new EU rules on USB-C chargers come into force within the EU: https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/12/27/new-eu-rules-on-common-usb-c-chargers-for-electronics-to-come-into-force
Is ValiDrive closed-source?
I was curious once about those “2 terabyte” usb flash drives. I bought a small metal one for 5 usd. It turned out to be around 8 gigabytes and was somewhat slow in write speed. I left them a “nice” review, ;)
btw, I once saw a screenshot of grc’s program in another marketplace review for a different “2 tb” drive. More people should do that.
Not sure how useful this app will be for me, but +1 for the value of Gibson’s apps in gemeral… been using them for years. His InControl is a must for me on Win10/11 machines. And I love his old homebrew website (the whole WWweb used to look like this…)
Another place some USB drives lie is about rotation speed, for those who still using HDDs. I’ve recently bought new big-brand (WD) USB HDDs for a project for use as cheap offline backup, and while they were sold as 5400rpm, they were actually 4800rpm, which I didn’t know anybody even made any more. Not a big issue for this particular application, but now I check for this, at least as long as HDDs are a thing.
Perhaps some basic best practices in online shopping would be prudent here?
On Amazon it’s easy to research the seller before making a purchase.
Spot checking is insufficient. He should know better and so should you Martin.
There are other simple free tools for many years out there more fit for purpose, that basically fill up the drive with generated data and then reads it all back, comparing to what the algorithm would have put on there.
Usually just random (prgn) junk, but sometimes a encrypted stream instead. Basically incompressible and unfakeable.
That way no sneaky malicious “firmware” can get away with faking capacity, it would have to fake 100% of it, and correctly so, at which point its purpose, namely fooling you, is defeated.
Only downside it that it tends to take a long time to run on the slower thumbdrives.
Interesting.
Would this also be useful to test the HEALTH of a USB drive? If not, what current recommended software would?
Also, is there software/hardware recommendations for testing USB cabling – what is it’s ACTUAL rating?
Thanks, Martin. Sorry I have not been around much lately.