Just a follow-up.
I lodged an item not decribed case. Ebay doesn't give you much room to say what's wrong so my explanation was - truthfully - the drive was unreliable after a bit over 100GB was written to it.
The seller did not respond to polite emails or the case I raised requesting a return. ebay allowed the return and refunded my payment.
For my own edification I tried a number of tests to conclusively 'fail' the drives; based on the assumption that I had not already identified they were fake:
- The drives came formatted as ex-FAT. Seagate ships their drives as ex-FAT for cross platform compatibitity, but provides Windows and Mac tools to their preferred file systems. Attempts to re-format these drives as NTFS under Windows - which I do with my regular Seagate drives - always failed.
- The drives came in packaging that was very like Seagate's Backup Plus Slim packaging, but no labels were affixed to either the drive or box identifying model or serial numbers,
- I tried the software diagnotic mentioned earlier, and halted it after several hours when it did did not give any errors after writing past the limit I assumed for the drive; suggesting the flash drive doesn't throw up a clear fault when you write to a logical address that is beyond its physical limit.
- I used Hard Disk Sentinel for Windows to interrogate the drive, but aside from some basic characteristics like the drive's (fake) capacity, the S.M.A.R.T. features typical of most hard drives were unreadable.
- In the end I just tried writing lots of large files. This just showed me that the drives were incredibly unreliable. Basic file operations like trying to move files between folders often resulted in files just disappearing.
Sure, I knowingly purchased drives I suspected might be fake, from a seller who had a reasonable (but not very high) feedback history. Initially I was contemplating the possibility that the seller was acting in good faith and had unknowingly sourced product that turned out to be fake. Their failure to respond to complaints suggests otherwise.
I think a lot of these drives are in circulation with buyers who think they got a bargain, and who will only find out later they were dudded. Short of leaving negative feedback - that most people won't see - I don't know of any mechnism that would raise the alarm for prospective buyers.
Yes, ebay provides some reporting mechanisms, but I suspect they won't or can't act without evidence unless the complaint comes from someone like a license holder, manufacturer representative, or a bunch of complaining buyers like myself.
For the record I think it's silly to suggest my actions help to support dishonest sellers. Failure to seek any redress might be construed as such, but I never had any intentions of letting the seller get away with supplying me with a dud product. If anything I'm trying to draw attention to this kind of deceit.
