Got scammed by a $39 USB "drive tester" from a flea market in Reno, learned my lesson the hard way
Bought this little gadget from a guy in a van outside the flea market in Reno back in March, and it was supposed to test flash drives for fake capacity. It just blinked a bunch of lights and told me everything was "100% PASS," including a clearly fake 2TB drive I got off a sketchy site. Turns out the thing was just a gutted USB hub with an LED strip and a cheap chip that always returns the same result. Wasted $39 and a whole afternoon testing drives that I later found out were garbage with a free program instead. Has anyone found a real hardware tester that does not cost a fortune, or is software really the only way to catch these fakes?