New utility to check for "fake" flash drives - I like this one

Wisewiz said:

Wow! That's so impressive for a tiny, uninstalled, free utility. Gibson Research is generous.

Click to expand...

Visit his site. You might find allot more to help you out with some of his new and older apps.

Steve Gibson has a ton of good utilities, and his continued use of Assembly for his programs always makes me happy. I've used several of his utilities before, both past and present, and did not realize this was out.

I tested the following UFDs:

• HP 128 GB USB 3 (2x)
• PNY 16 GB USB 2 (3x)
• PNY 32 GB USB 3 (4x)
• SanDisk Cruzer 8 GB USB 2 (2x)
• SanDisk Ultra 32 GB USB 3 (3x)
• no name 32 MB USB 2 (yes, MB - You can probably guess how old this one is lol)
• no name 1 GB USB 2 (from a professional conference I attended for my Masters program)

I've learned now to never ever buy PNY drives again.

All the SanDisk ones, even my nearly 15 year old 8 GB drives, went through the test very quickly, completing in seconds.

All of the PNY drives took minutes (usually not higher than 2 minutes though).

Attached below are 3 sample reports from each of the USB 3 drives, as well as one from the SanDisk Cruzer 8 GB USB 2 drive.

Hard to believe the old 128 GB HP UFDs are so much faster than the PNY 32 GB UFDs when testing. But the evidence doesn't lie, especially since I have a pair of the HPs and 4 of the PNYs.

johnlgalt said:

I've learned now to never ever buy PNY drives again.

Click to expand...

Yes, I've made the same mistake. Those are allot of numbers for time.

Tried any of your big HDDs yet?

johnlgalt said:

Hard to believe the old 128 GB HP UFDs are so much faster than the PNY 32 GB UFDs when testing. But the evidence doesn't lie, especially since I have a pair of the HPs and 4 of the PNYs.

Click to expand...

To be expected. The higher the capacity, the higher the speed. I think this is because more parallel operations can be performed. The same applies to SSDs.

Anibor_11 said:

same applies to SSDs.

Click to expand...

Yes, I've seen the same when comparing nvmes 1 TB to a 2 TB in CrystalDisk.
2 TBs are always faster.

Flashorn said:

Yes, I've made the same mistake. Those are allot of numbers for time.

Tried any of your big HDDs yet?

Click to expand...

Not yet, I plan to sometime soon just for Ss & Gs.

Anibor_11 said:

To be expected. The higher the capacity, the higher the speed. I think this is because more parallel operations can be performed. The same applies to SSDs.

Click to expand...

The old HP x702w's took 1/3 the time while being 4x the size. And they are much older, I paid a lot of money for them back in the day to use with RMPrepUSB and Easy2Boot with several .ISOs.

And the SanDisk Ultras are 32 GB right alongside the the PNY 32 GB UFDs, but performed about 1000x faster, but were slower than the SanDisk Cruze 16 GB UFDs.

Flashorn said:

Tried any of your big HDDs yet?

Click to expand...

Sabrent Rocket 4.0 NVMe PCIe gen 4 (in a USB 3.1 enclosure) attached. It was by far the fastest lol - but we knew that going in.

This is a RealTek nvme LOL!
It's my Samsung 860 Pro 256 Gig clone for my Win 10 GT73 Titan.
Have no idea why it was named as such. In PC it was Windows E.
It's a Gen 3 connected to a 3.2 Gen 2.

I picked up a couple flash drives laying on my desk and checked them.

ONN 16 GB USB 2.0
No Name 8 GB USB 2.0

Both drives took forever and three days to go through the process. I didn't actually time them, but they were slower than molasses.

I then picked a Sandisk Ultra 64 GB USB 3.0 from my stash, and it zoomed right along. Took a few seconds.

I likes it!

Very handy indeed!

Scannerman said:

Very handy indeed!

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's always nice to have multiple options. I also like that this one provides some additional insights that some utilities don't provide. I know that I learned a bit from this!