The Game with cheap Chinese Hardware That's it, mostly with a bad outcome too! Today I bought at a Fleamarket 2 external USB HDDs, each 35THB (1 Euro)! Was looking quite new and unused, both coming with USB 2 Cable, while on the case it was mentioned to be FAST for USB2 + 3! Connected the first one to a desktop and it was showing to have 2 TB. For testing, I started to copy 180GB of data to that drive it started with a speed of 25mb/s, which went down to 15mb/s after reaching 45 GB copying already! After reaching 60GB data stopped moving! The time was come to firstly check that 2. drive. Firstly needed to find out how to open that case, no screws, etc. to be shown, or other ways to open up that case. Brachial power was the way to go! I got the case open without damage, just a few scratches marks are shown! OK, the outcome of what's inside that case: a Hitachi IDE 2.5' 4200rpm and 40GB! I had an old IDE 2.5' IDE lying around and took that to check the drive, outcome: is 2TB! Opened that other case the same way and found that the drive used also was a Hitachi 4200rpm but 60GB storage capacity. Overall, it seems to be that the Chinese have changed the Firmware of the used drives to show a different actual storage capacity! I had an old 160GB 2.5' IDE HDD lying around and placed that onto the controller of those cases and that was shown just the correct storage capacity of the 160GB! It's for some big trading companies in Thailand normal for to sell a lot of such fake products, such special USB Flash Drive and Cards as well as SSDs too! Anyway, now I have 2 working IDE 2.5' HDD Cases again and could use them for to run some of those old drives if that is needed.
Oh yea, tons and tons of cheap storage devices come with faked EEPROMS/Firmwares these days. From simple usb thumb drives to HDDs... For example, showing 1TB in size in Windows, but only offering some gigabytes, most people will not even recognize they got scammed, as they never copy that much data on it anyway. "Nice" niche market for scammers... Some of these cheap devices even come with malware and (hardware)keyloggers, that will sent your data to "curios" people. There are simple tools out there to enable autostart on USB drives by manipulating the firmware, as windows will detect them as CD drive. So many possibilities. Welcome to the future.
What does this have to do with China? Is it China that needs the baht settlement or is it made in China from somewhere you see it? This kind of rotten technology can be learned by everyone on earth with a little careful study.
Those drives were imported directly from China! Therefore: Chinese products! And even those including HDDs (of those Cases) had Chinese Service Stickers on them! Evidence enough?
>The Game with cheap Chinese Hardware @ Examples ---- > Europe used to have a thriveing motorbike industry that made some of the best bikes ever . Then japan started makeing box girder frames for bikes ........... the materials the bikes were made from were cheaper .......... and of lower quality . That made most of the european motorbike industry kaput . Then after it was kaput the japanes started building good quality bikes ......... that were / are built like the bikes that used to be made by the european industry . @ China = MERCHANTS ............ wich europe doesnt have anymore . Merchants sell things ........ and dont respect copyright , patent or standards .......... wich european ' merchants ' are bound by . When stores like ' Conrad ' or ' Mediamarkt ' buy containers full of cheep and nasty plastic s**t that falls apart after 5 minutes they make a profit ........... and we get ripped off . The chinese merchants send a container here .......... maybe 30 % of the articles are broken / dont function before they arive . Others fall apart after a short time ...... because they were designed to do that . = China makes massive profits ......... and makes our electronics industry kaput ........... the rich play the game = They buy the cheep and nasty crap from china = sabotage us and our industry ......... and make a profit . They dont care about the massive amount of products that we get that are f**ked / over priced / badly designed ........ or their = our ......... futures ........... because all they care about is their profit .