USB Flash Drives Best Price Bargains Fair Value To Sell Or Buy 8GB 16GB 32GB

Are you looking for a bargain price for a usb flash drive? To Buy or to sell? What is the real cost from a wholesaler in 2009? Want to be sure you aren’t paying too much? Or that you might be cheated or scammed?

There is a rock bottom “fair price” you can expect to pay. The problem is, most people do not know what that is. Both resellers and buyers end up with counterfeit or fakes when they don’t know the real prices. Flash based technology is not like buying and selling shoes. The biggest danger is that people feel they can just buy from whoever sells the cheapest. Anyone who thinks this way is heading for trouble. The only way to avoid it is to understand the prices and the capacity sizes. If you don’t do your homework you will buy a fake – a flash drive that has been reprogrammed to lie about it’s real size. As a buyer you risk data loss. A reseller will have an angry hoard of buyers chasing them and even reporting the reseller to law authorities.

So what are the real costs? What is the largest real size for a usb flash drive that can currently be produced? The FrankenFlash Project has prepared the answers as part of a global awareness programme. Read on to learn the truth!

Current for 2009, the largest usb flash drive that can be produced is 256GB.

The newest flash drive chip size is 16GB. They are expensive. Four 16GB chips are needed in a usb flash drive working together under a controller chip to give a 64GB capacity. The standard flash drive chip is 8GB and is produced in China. They are less expensive but for a good quality chip still costly. To have a 16GB capacity normally you would need 2 8GB chips working together under a controller. You may find a few odd ones using 4 4GB chips. Real 32GB flash drives would need 2 16GB expensive flash drive chips or 4 8GB flash drive chips.

There are no usb flash drives in the following capacity sizes: 120GB, 240GB, 250GB, 360GB, 500GB, 512GB.

Any usb flash drive listed in one of these sizes is a fake, regardless of what you see in your operating system for the capacity. Period! usb flash drives are not made these sizes and never have been. The highest is 256GB (seeWhat Is The Biggest USB Pen Stick Memory Flash Drive Size On The Market? Kingston Technologies Releases DT300 256GB ), it is still very early and experimental for usb flash drives in this new size. They are also very expensive. Never buy a usb flash drive in this size without verifying at the brand name manufacturer’s site. Be careful of anyone claiming “OEM” for a no name brand,

There is no such thing as up grading a flash drive to a higher size. No software can do this, except to lie to the controller and change the “seen” size. To upgrade a flash drive you would have to add more flash drive chips for storage. When people open fakes they don’t see a little army of flash drive chips to give the advertised size. Exactly where would they go? There is no place to put them. You would have to redesign the circuit board and if you stacked all the 8GB chips needed to reach the capacity you won’t have a slim usb flash drive any more. Upgrading is a polite term used by fraudsters for fakes – false flash capacity! Beware of the “Upgraded” word. No such thing.

So how do we know what the general and average prices are? From honest sellers and wholesalers. The FrankenFlash project has investigators who contacted a lot of wholesalers in China. Also we have one reseller who is willing to tell us the true costs.

On March 7th, 2009 Dave give us the most recent costs from his supplier:

Hi All,

I just got an updated price list from my supplier.
The wholesale price of flash drives is going up.

Just the chip sets (the guts) are as follows:
8 GB $13.15
16 GB 28.86
32 GB 58.47

The shells (outside covering) run between $2.02 & $4.36 depending on the style.

So the cheapest I can get would be:
8 GB $15.17
16 GB $30.88
32 GB $60.49

The shipping and customs fees from china to USA run just under $200 per 100 units.
So add another $2.00 to each drive.

So the cost of the chip set, without a casing for 8GB is $13.15. With the casing and duties, it is $17.17. That is the resellers price. Now the reseller needs to sell and make a profit. Dave sells on eBay so he must factor in more costs:

BASED ON SELLING THE DRIVE FOR $19.50 W/ FREE SHIPPING:
Ebay charges to list an item… $.35
Ebay charges a fee when your item sells… $1.17
PayPal charges the seller a fee to receive the money… $.87
shipping and handling to the customer is just under $1.75
THAT IS $21.31 USD for the cheapest 8 GB without profit !!!

I am currently trying to sell mine on ebay for $19.50 w/ free shipping and they are not selling.
ALL BECAUSE THE FAKE ONES LOOK LIKE SUCH A GOOD DEAL.

At the moment, Dave is selling at a loss.

Why? Because people are attracted to cheaper prices. They find him too expensive. So they buy the cheap ones, mainly from Hong Kong and China. Only they don’t receive a real 8GB flash drive, or 16GB or 32GB or even yes, a 360GB flash drive. They paid too little. No one sells below cost! That is not how honest business can succeed. Oddly if one checks the real size victims of fake flash receive against the cost of the real size, they paid a few dollars or pounds more – to own a genuine fake false capacity usb flash drive. Many buyers unfortunately lose data and start hunting the internet. Soon they are knocking on the doors of SOSFakeFlash for HELP!

The real reason the FrankenFlash Project exists – is not the money people lose. It is about the data they lose. Fraud is everywhere. It is not uncommon. These false capacity usb drives are dangerous – to data. The harm and trauma caused to people can not be described. Money can always be earned anew, but data lost forever is something else. Memories. Work. Thoughts and Ideas. Being fired at a company for losing information is bad too. False capacity usb flash drives are a disease, a plague that that is destroying information around the world.

Stability Of Large Capacity USB Flash Drives

Dave asked his supplier about the stability of larger capacity usb flash drives:

This is what my supplier said about the current stability of the larger flash drives:

16GB chipset: USD28.86(All model can do 16GB)
32GB chipset: USD58.47(Some can do 32GB with enough space, Some has no enough space can`t do 32GB)

What is this stability thing? Well for one thing current circuit boards and controllers can work with and hold flash chips up to 16GB in generic brands. For 32GB there is often a problem, no place to put all the necessary 8GB chips and so on. Also getting the most out of the chips and the current controllers depends a lot on the model, especially for unbranded. For branded drives, that information is under lock and key – proprietary. Sony’s highest size right now is 32GB and Kingston’s 64GB. The companies leading the highest size capacities tend to be those who manufacture RAM chips as well.

If you need a 32Gb or 64GB usb flash drive size, go to a local reputable retail chain to buy one. For the newest technology, expect to pay the price. Otherwise, get several 16GB or 8GB flash drives. You are NOT advised to think of the new capacities for long term data storage. They are unproven. Always check the warranty. 5 years or limited lifetime? Like hard disks and ram chips they have a finite life expectancy.

What you do with usb flash drives determines just how long they can last! Never use defragmentation tools on them and avoid using them like hard disks with lots of writes and deletes. In other articles to come we will explain on the subject. Right now we are focused on helping steer people away from the fakes to find genuine usb flash drives. So for the moment do not think usb flash drives are miniature hard disks and behave like them, they don’t. They are similar to the SSD drives coming out for PC’s (laptops) but they are not as robust.

Flash Drive Chip Quality

Is there such a thing as flash drive chip quality? Yes there is. Is the difference serious? Yes.

Fakes use flash drive chips that are factory rejects or experimental chips that did not make it to market. SOSFakeFlash has seen many repaired fakes (using special low level reformatting programmes) show a final capacity much below the flash drive chips actual size. This is because the bad sectors had to be locked out and they can be a lot – shrinking the drives final size. In very cheap generic usb flash drives, lower quality chips are used to delive the lower price.

There are four grades to flash drive chips. Please read this article to learn more.   Genuine Verses Fake Counterfeit USB Flash Drives – A Guide – USB Flash Chips Used In USB Flash Drives – Grades A B C D

You will find the information very helpful in understanding prices. As a reseller you may just be interested in acquiring your merchandise cheaply but if you want repeat sales, quality is a determining factor. If you are a buyer, quality should mean more to you. It is your data and your information you intend to store on the usb flash drive that should determine what you are you are willing to pay.

So Things To Remember About Best Price:

1. The cheapest wholesale price for an 8GB usb flash drive is about $17 US
2. The highest true capacity is 64GB. Any size above that is not currently possible in 2009.
3. The higher the true capacity for a flash drive, the higher the price.
4. The more recent 32GB and 64GB usb flash drives tend to use the latest technology and will therefore be a lot more expensive.
5. There is no such thing as upgrading an existing flash drive. Once manufactured, it is a finished product. The only upgrading is to alter the drive to lie about it’s true capacity.
6. Buying a Brand Name is no protection against acquiring a counterfeit fake. Recently the latest DT150 32GB 32 GB DataTraveler 150 USB 2.0 from Kingston has been counterfeited and sold on eBay. See abestpartner0 Ebay Fake Flash Seller Alert – China – counterfeit DT150 32GB 32 GB Data Traveler 150
7. You can find fakes and counterfeits on eBay, internet sites around the world and also wholesaling sites in China and Hong Kong.
8. Due to the current economic situation globally, costs for usb flash drives have actually been going up in spring 2009, not down. Dave’s final import cost prices were lower in winter 2009 than now.

Testing

Read H2testw 1.4 – Gold Standard In Detecting USB Counterfeit Drivesand make sure you test any usb flash drive you buy before using it to make sure you have the true capacity.

If you bought to sell, you MUST test your merchandise with this software before offering for sale. If you don’t you could be hounded by buyers, get into trouble with the law and end up as a story at one of the FrankenFlash Project websites. Also you need proof to pursue against whoever sold you fake capacity drives that you intended to sell. Do not hesitate to report to law authorities locally and in the sellers home country.

If you have a fake, whether a buyer or seller notify SOSFakeFlash at SOSFakeflashdrive@gmail.com They are documenting the problem. It is because the problem is so serious on a global scale that the FrankenFlash Project has a new site, https://flashdrivefacts.wordpress.com/ to provide more information and education to everyone.

For fakes purchased on eBay please use the Report A Fake tab to see the information to send.

Updated 20091019: to include new largest size, 256GB.