datahoarder
Who are we?
We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
We are one. We are legion. And we're trying really hard not to forget.
-- 5-4-3-2-1-bang from this thread
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Regarding fakes, there are tools you can (and should) run on any new drive. I personally like h2testw, but there are others as well.
You should also avoid sketchy resellers. This includes Amazon, due to their policy of commingling and their response to counterfeits. Don't buy from Amazon! Stick to trustworthy and first-party sellers. If buying online, make sure they don't have a third party seller. In fact, probably best to skip any that even have a 3rd party "marketplace" system.
Validrive is a new tool that’s quite good at detecting fakes.
I don't think there are really any fake 256 GB drives on the market. The real drives are priced low enough that there's really not much profit to be made from selling fakes. It's just not that much cheaper to make a 32 GB drive and flash fake firmware than to actually make a legitimate 256 GB drive. Or buy the AmazonBasics brand since only Amazon makes and sells them.