Is my USB flash drive compressed?

  • Thread starter Thread starter zalek
  • Start date Start date
zalek wrote:
> On Nov 4, 5:41 am, Jesco Lincke <ichw...@keine.mail> wrote:
>> zalek schrieb:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> I bought it on eBay from someone from China that calls himself
>>> hailitele - he sells tons of this stuff on eBay. It looks that if you
>>> do not pass 1gb - you have no idea that this is a hacked product. The
>>> price is great - about $40 for 4gb mp3 player :----------))
>>> Now I want to reformat disk to get true capacity, otherwise I am not
>>> getting any error copying files - just files are getting corrupted.
>>> Here what I am getting: in DOS:
>>> F:\>chkdsk
>>> The type of the file system is RAW.
>>> CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.
>>> But under Windows:
>>> Type: Removable Disk
>>> File system: FAT32
>>> Under Volumes:
>>> Disk: Disk 1
>>> Type: Removable
>>> Partition style: MBR
>>> Capacity: 962 MB
>>> Volumes:
>>> Capacity 4084 MB
>>> Any idea how to fix it?
>>> Thanks,
>>> Zalek
>> Chalk it up under "why not to buy unbelievably cheap stuff from kinda
>> weird foreign people in ebay"...
>> I'd say, for 40$ it was a cheap lesson...
>
> Well - I didn't write to this group asking to wipe my tears - I have
> technical question - how to restore this drive to its true capacity.

Your drive is already at it's TRUE capacity.

There's a link on the EBAY site that claims virtually ALL 4+gb thumb
drives on ebay are fake. There are links to vendor sites that try to
tell you how to identify a fake drive. I've tried to buy two drives
locally off craigslist. Both were fake.

According to the legend, you have to reprogram the non-reprogrammable
code in the flash controller. This lies to the OS. The legend says the
devices
are manufactured this way and not merely reflashed by the scammer.

It would be nice to force the drive to report it's TRUE capacity so you
could at least use the thing. My searching has turned up no such procedure.
--
Return address is VALID!
 
On Nov 6, 8:38 pm, gabiruh <gabi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 4, 9:56 am, zalek <zalekbl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Well - I didn't write to this group asking to wipe my tears - I have
> > technical question - how to restore this drive to its true capacity.
> > If you don't know - lets cry together about this cruel world...
>
> > Zalek
>
> Format it as FAT16
> At Linux: mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/? <-- drive's block device path

Problem solved - only Low Level Format restored this drive.
The original hack somehow changed low-level format, that Win Format
worked, but still showed incorrect value.
I tried to access it with Linux, but Linux couldn't mount it.

Zalek
 
On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:11:20 GMT, mike <spamme9@gmail.com> put finger
to keyboard and composed:

>There's a link on the EBAY site that claims virtually ALL 4+gb thumb
>drives on ebay are fake. There are links to vendor sites that try to
>tell you how to identify a fake drive. I've tried to buy two drives
>locally off craigslist. Both were fake.
>
>According to the legend, you have to reprogram the non-reprogrammable
>code in the flash controller. This lies to the OS. The legend says the
>devices
>are manufactured this way and not merely reflashed by the scammer.
>
>It would be nice to force the drive to report it's TRUE capacity so you
>could at least use the thing. My searching has turned up no such procedure.

You can limit the user capacity of a regular IDE HD by writing to its
"Host Protected Area":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area

I wonder if flash drives support this feature.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 
Franc Zabkar wrote in news:7qv3j39ro959l68v9tm0n3o92sb32bmnou@4ax.com
> On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:11:20 GMT, mike <spamme9@gmail.com> put finger
> to keyboard and composed:
>
> > There's a link on the EBAY site that claims virtually ALL 4+gb thumb
> > drives on ebay are fake. There are links to vendor sites that try to
> > tell you how to identify a fake drive. I've tried to buy two drives
> > locally off craigslist. Both were fake.
> >
> > According to the legend, you have to reprogram the non-reprogrammable
> > code in the flash controller. This lies to the OS. The legend says the
> > devices
> > are manufactured this way and not merely reflashed by the scammer.
> >
> > It would be nice to force the drive to report it's TRUE capacity so you
> > could at least use the thing. My searching has turned up no such procedure.
>
> You can limit the user capacity of a regular IDE HD

> by writing to its "Host Protected Area":

By setting its Host Protected Area.

>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area
>
> I wonder if flash drives support this feature.

Compact Flash might. USB probably not.

>
> - Franc Zabkar
 
"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
news:7qv3j39ro959l68v9tm0n3o92sb32bmnou@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:11:20 GMT, mike <spamme9@gmail.com> put finger
> to keyboard and composed:
>
>>There's a link on the EBAY site that claims virtually ALL 4+gb thumb
>>drives on ebay are fake. There are links to vendor sites that try to
>>tell you how to identify a fake drive. I've tried to buy two drives
>>locally off craigslist. Both were fake.
>>
>>According to the legend, you have to reprogram the non-reprogrammable
>>code in the flash controller. This lies to the OS. The legend says the devices
>>are manufactured this way and not merely reflashed by the scammer.
>>
>>It would be nice to force the drive to report it's TRUE capacity so you
>>could at least use the thing. My searching has turned up no such procedure.
>
> You can limit the user capacity of a regular IDE HD by writing to its
> "Host Protected Area":
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area
>
> I wonder if flash drives support this feature.
>
An IDE (pata/sata) flash drive could,
but USB drives would have to implement the SCSI mode page (unlikely).
 
Back
Top