Is my USB flash drive compressed?

  • Thread starter Thread starter zalek
  • Start date Start date
zalek said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Format it as FAT16
At Linux: mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/? <-- drive's block device path
Click to expand...

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
 
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.
Click to expand...

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
 
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