I bought a USB stick for about $20 from a small local tech shop, but I noticed several spelling mistakes on the packaging, including "meatal" instead of "metal" in the phrase "Full cast meatal design." I'm concerned that it may be counterfeit rather than a genuine SanDisk product. How risky would it be to use, especially for creating a Windows installation drive? Should I return it and find another source, or is it probably safe enough?
3 Answers
I would return it rather than trust it with anything important. The packaging strongly suggests it may be counterfeit, and fake drives commonly have unreliable flash memory or falsely report their capacity. That can lead to corrupted files or a failed Windows installation. Buy a replacement from the most reputable retailer available and create the installer using Microsoft’s official tools.
If returning it is difficult, you can test the actual capacity with H2testw or another full-write verification tool. It writes data across the entire drive and checks whether the reported capacity is genuine. However, passing that test would not prove the drive is authentic or particularly reliable, so I still would not use it for important data.
The biggest concern is probably counterfeit or low-quality storage rather than the drive automatically installing malware. Still, a suspicious product is not worth using for a Windows installer when a bad drive could cause errors or data loss. I’d ask the shop for a refund and explain that the packaging appears misprinted or counterfeit.
I found what appears to be the same packaging online, both with and without the spelling mistakes. The version with the mistakes was listed on a very questionable overseas site, which makes me even less confident in this one.