Why You Should Avoid Buying Used USB Flash Drives

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If you’ve ever found yourself in need of a new USB flash drive, you might have wondered whether buying new is the way to go. A quick search on Facebook Marketplace or eBay will reveal that there’s no shortage of secondhand storage sticks, and USB drives are all basically the same, right? Why not save a little money by buying yours on the secondhand market? Even better than the savings, you may feel it’s more environmentally responsible to purchase your storage used. But while those motives are admirable, they fail to account for the unique nature of computer storage.

Not all storage drives are the same. Even more so than a good external SSD, flash drives are likely to be made cheaply, used heavily, and tossed around before being sold on the used market. Outdated storage and data transfer technologies can also be a headache to deal with if you have newer computers. Moreover, to buy any storage media secondhand is to expose yourself to a range of security and legal risks, from malware to illegal content.

Moreover, flash storage continues to be dirt cheap. Long gone are the days when a few gigabytes of storage would set your budget back. When you really consider all the risks that come with buying used flash drives, it’s clear that for most purposes, you’re better off getting a fresh one. So, here are the top five reasons you should avoid buying used USB flash drives.

Used USB storage can be faulty or broken

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Let’s start with the obvious: a secondhand USB drive can easily be broken or faulty. Of course, a seller could knowingly sell you a broken drive that simply fails to work when you plug it in. But what’s more likely is that you’ll wind up with a drive that is toward the end of its lifespan. It will work for a short time, and one day, without warning, it will fail. You’ll be left with a bricked drive and a whole lot of lost files.

The lifespan of a flash drive can vary from a few years to more than the life expectancy of an average human. Don’t expect to pass your flash drives down to your children, though. The more you use them by adding or deleting files, the shorter their lifespan becomes. And the lower the quality of the flash memory used in your drive, the less life you should expect from it. Conditions matter, too. Exposure to heat or extreme cold can damage a flash drive, as can moisture or particulate such as dust, lint, or sand. While you can research a used flash drive to determine how high quality it is, you have no way of knowing how much the previous owner used it, or how well they took care of it.

But a broken drive could be the least of your concerns. In a 2011 study, 66% of USB drives bought from a lost property auction contained malware. So, next, let’s talk about the security risks of used USB storage.

Used USB storage could contain malware

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A drop attack is the term for when an attacker leaves a USB drive lying around in the hopes that some poor schmuck will pick it up and plug it into their computer. This is not only an effective form of attack, but a common one. In one 2016 study conducted by Matthew Tischer, et al., researchers dropped 297 flash drives across the University of Illinois campus. The drives contained HTML files that allowed researchers to track whether the drives were plugged in. Stunningly, between 45-98 percent of the drives were connected, with the first one being used only six minutes after being dropped.

The average time it took for a dropped USB drive to get connected was 6.9 hours. Researchers followed up with many of those who connected the drives. 68 percent said they did so in the hopes of locating the drive’s owner, but nearly half of those opened what appeared to be personal files on the drive out of curiosity. A handful admitted wanting the drive for themselves. 68 percent also took no precautions when connecting the drives. This study included a sizable number of people who are knowledgeable about computers and the dangers of malware.

It’s not just college students. Even the FBI has had to warn its employees not to plug in random USB drives mailed to them. Of course, most people probably won’t be the target of foreign hackers or campus researchers, but you still shouldn’t trust secondhand USBs. That Facebook Marketplace listing for a steep discount on a thumb drive could cost you a lot more than you think, giving hackers access to your private data and potentially even your bank account. This goes for all secondhand storage, by the way, not just USB storage.

Secondhand USB drives could contain illegal content

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When you buy a USB flash drive secondhand, there’s no telling what you’ll find on it. Random vacation photos from people you don’t know? Likely. A half-finished novel manuscript? Not out of the question. Illegal content that could land you in jail? There’s a chance. We could be talking about something relatively innocent but nonetheless illegal, like a pirated copy of the 1999 animated classic “The Lion King,” but we could also be talking about something much darker, like child exploitation content. Either way, both are federal crimes that carry prison time.

There are many ways illegal files can end up on a flash drive that winds up plugged into your computer. For example, maybe the person you bought it from collects used tech in bulk and sells drives without bothering to check or wipe them. And consider this: deleted files can often be recovered from drives with easily available software if they haven’t been properly wiped, so you could have evidence of a crime on your hand and not know it, even if the drive seems empty.

What do you even do if you find illegal content on a flash drive? Providers are required to report the most extreme cases of illegal content, but the law is less clear for end users. In less severe cases like finding pirated media, you could be fine, but those files could also contain hidden malware as we covered above. Whatever the case, it’s unwise to risk adding the cost of a lawyer to your purchase of a flash drive.

Secondhand USB drives could be out of date

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Another common issue you’re likely to encounter when buying a used USB drive is out of date storage technology. USB has been around for decades, and it has evolved alongside newer and better forms of data storage and transfer technology. This means manufacturers coming up with new designs for their latest thumb drives account not only for newer storage tech but for the latest USB standards, too.

Flash drives rely on NAND storage, which first came out in 1987. It’s a simple, effective, and cheap way of storing data, but like most technology, it continues to improve. Today, most flash drives are still based on NAND, but manufacturers are now shipping ninth generation NAND for SSDs and more. Each subsequent generation has improved on specifications like bandwidth, density for more storage, and data speeds. Getting a future proofed flash drive could save you more money in the long run than the short-term savings of buying used.

USB connectors have improved over time as well. If you buy new, you can get faster USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds, whereas older USB drives could be based on much older standards that will transfer your files much more slowly. If your computers are relatively new, they likely have high-speed blue USB ports that will allow them to transfer very large files in a matter of seconds when a compatible USB drive is plugged in. Those same files could easily take orders of magnitude longer to transfer on an out of date thumb drive, but the silver lining is you’ll have time to fix a snack and make some tea while you wait.

USB storage is dirt cheap

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If all the above reasons don’t outweigh your desire to save a bit of money, you should consider that USB flash storage is dirt cheap, especially for smaller storage sizes. Today, a 128 GB Amazon Basics USB 3.1 Flash Drive costs a mere $11.99, and even the 256 GB version is under $25. If that’s still too rich for your blood, Micro Center sells 32 GB thumb drives for $3.49. That’s less than a cup of coffee these days! At the same retailer, 128 GB of storage costs $8.99, 256 GB goes for $17.99, and 512 GB will only run you $34.99. Not only are all these drives virtually guaranteed to be free of the issues above, but if they do happen to break, you’ll have a return policy and warranty to fall back on.

In other words, buying used flash storage is all risk, no reward. Why would you risk broken, outdated, or compromised flash drives to save so little money? Even if your concern is environmental, which is entirely valid, there are plenty of ways to save the planet that don’t expose you to that type of risk. And instead of trying to sell your old flash storage, try getting clever and discovering another use for your old USB drives.

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