Comment by schainks

If you dig at the vendor data stored on the drive firmware, fakes are easy to spot. Model numbers, vendor ID, and serial numbers will be zero’d out or not conforming to manufacturer spec.

I purchased a bunch of fake kingston SD cards in China that worked well enough for the price, but crapped out within a year of mild use. I didn’t lose data. It was as if one day they worked. Then one day they were fried.