USB 3.0 Flash Key at 2TB at Only €6 ! CORRECTED

Don’t forget to read a corrected article:
We Apologize: USB Key at €6 With Only 20GB, not 2TB
Specialist Jim Handy explains the fraud.
by Jean-Jacques Maleval | 2017.02.10 | News

During my visit in Paris at my excellent osteopath originated from Bangladesh to care for my back, during the conversation, he asked us what was my job. “I’m a veteran journalist in IT storage“, I answered.

He continued:” So maybe you could be interested by my recent acquisition in China on Geek of a 2TB USB key for €8.“

The specialist I’m supposed to be told him: “I don’t believe you, it’s impossible to get such a capacity at this price.”

He shows me the small device and connects it to its PC notebook. The key appears on the screen with 1.9TB formatted.

The first time we heard about this huge capacity was in 2011 when Taiwan’s ITRI and Transcend announced they teamed up to create a USB 3.0 thumb stick featuring 2TB of storage.

Today you cannot find 2TB flash drives from the main manufacturers. Last January Kingston Digital was probably the first to release a voluminous 2TB USB 3.0 USB key.

On Amazon, Kingston sells today its DataTraveler HyperX Predator USB 3.0 Flash Drive (DTHXP30/1TB) at 1TB only for $3,169.

Following this discovery from our osteopath, we decided on January 16, 2017 to order ten of these 2TB USB 3.0 keys on the web site of Geek.

There was a promotion for this flash drive at €6 per unit plus €2 for shipping per key. Then total was €80 for 20TB or 0.004€/GB. Current price has increased to €9 per unit and €3 for shipping per key, which continues to be very affordable.

We were supposed to receive the parcel between February 20 and March 2, 2017. We got it from China Post more rapidly, on February 2, 2017.

Now we use four of these keys for:

Backup of our MacBook Pro working on macOS Sierra with Time Machine (formatting was automatic but the operation was interrupted for an unknown reason after storing 20GB)
Save an image of our entire computer to get the possibility of booting (unable with Time Machine)
Save an image of an old version of our computer based on MacOS 9.9 with software no more working with Sierra
Save all our music and videos

It took a long time for these operations because our computer has only USB 2.0 connectors whose speed is much lower that USB 3.0.

Note that we also backup our machine on the cloud using Backblaze ($50/computer/year for unlimited capacity).

And apparently the quality of our keys is relatively good.

Consequently we have stored in our closet all our former four external 2.5-inch HDDs – costing €70 to €80 for 2TB – now in big competition with these tiny flash keys.

There are only five sources of flash chip manufacturing: Intel/Micron in Lehi, Samsung, Toshiba/WD, SK Hynix and Powerchip, respectable big companies. We doubt that they have special lines of wafers with lower quality for certain customers. So there is no reason our keys contain bad flash chips.

Where do these ten keys come from? Looking at the information coming from our MacBook Pro, the name of the company behind them is unknown firm Integrated Technology Express, Inc. or UDisk with a web site unable to find.