Counterfeit Kingston DataTraveller 100 Flashdrive

Man, I almost got fooled. I have bought so many pendrives online before (all genuine until now) that I didn't think I would fall for one. A scam, a fake, a counterfeit.

I didn't suspect anything when I first received this 'Kingston' pendrive. As a matter of fact, I gave this seller a 5 Star rating and quite a good review for this purchase.

But one evening, Windows bombed out while I was copying a large number of files, totalling about 2 GB in size. This pendrive was still detectable but the files and folders were not viewable in Windows Explorer. I panicked. What has gone wrong? And what's this with Windows Device Manager detecting this pendrive as 'SMI USB DISK USB Device' and not as 'Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 USB Device'?

Feeling uneasy, I contacted Kingston Technical Support. I e-mailed them the pictures of the serial number of this pendrive when requested. Within 2 working days, my suspicion was confirmed. The 64GB Kingston DataTraveler 100 that I purchased 4 weeks earlier is indeed a counterfeit. Thank you Kingston Technical Support for your help and prompt response. And yes, I will lodge an official complain with Lazada Malaysia against this seller.

Genuine Versus Counterfeit

Here are some pictures that I have taken of a genuine Kingston DataTraveler 100 pendrives (plus packaging) and the counterfeit. The drive capacity may be different but I think the features on a genuine DataTraveler pendrives are standard across the product range. The discrepancies are quite obvious, if you know where to look. Oh yeah, what a horrible ugly looking Kingston Head on the counterfeit. Sorry for that crumple looking packaging for the genuine Kingston pendrive - I couldn't find a decent one around, sorry.

From now on, I am going to place close attention to other online purchaser's comment when purchasing a pendrive. They usually give a clue as to whether what is being sold is a genuine or a counterfeit.

And one last thing. The counterfeit came pre-formatted in NTFS, not FAT32.