Fake USB flash disks identification?

**fromaron** · 25-01-08, 11:40 AM

I recently bought a flash disk from China knowing it was a fake one. I bought it anyway as I wanted to play with it. The disk shows Sony brand name and registers in XP as 128GB

Yes, 128GB! You can even copy stuff into it, just can't read it back as all files are corrupted.
XP refuses to format the disk only HP format tool lets me to format it. NTFS format fails at the end of the formatting, when FAT32 format goes all the way (not helping with corrupted files problem).
I also tried MPTool utility, which formatted the disk as 1 GB one. So now the disk is registering as 1 Gb and works reliably all the time.
I wonder if anyone has good utility which can reliably identify the disk chip and or memory size? Also a format utility which lets you specify all different settings including size to be formatted would be handy.
How can they fake the hardware so it registers in XP as big volume?

**ben10** · 25-01-08, 01:46 PM

well lucky you didn't buy 1 of these

**fromaron** · 25-01-08, 01:53 PM

Originally Posted by ben10

well lucky you didn't buy 1 of these

Huh, it's classic. Why did you hide the serial number, BTW?
No. I actually got the guy in China to bring laptop and plug it in for testing. Silly me I should have get him to copy and then read back a few gig file, just to ruin him.

**troyboy** · 25-01-08, 02:06 PM

Mate sound the same drama's I'm having.

I bought a 2GB Sandisk SD Card offf ebay from China for $19.98 Delivered. It looks genuine, yet it came with no packaging. I'm limited to the number of files I can have in the root folder. I also have a 1GB memory card and that takes as many files as I like. This one only takes around 500 files.

After a bit of research i read that there are quite a few bodgy ones available on ebay and it appears that they have a lot of problems.

Not sure about yours, but I'm going to create folders and seperate my files that way so that I can use the full 2GB.

**fromaron** · 25-01-08, 02:24 PM

It sounds simillar, troyboy.
If we could reliably identify the chip used with some sort of software I am sure the disk can be revived (smaller size of course) and used at least for something.
If you bought it of ebay, launch a dispute. I've read some people actually got their money back disputing via paypal or ebay, without sending the fake disk back. Ebay is asking for fake chip sellers to be reported, so you might do yourself and others favour by reporting it.

**urban_s0ulja** · 25-01-08, 02:29 PM

mate
stick with a brand name and you wont go wrong.
spend a little bit extra it'll take you a long way

i use and sell kingmax flash media products never had a problem with a single unit. I can vouch for that brand

.

**fromaron** · 25-01-08, 02:34 PM

Originally Posted by urban_s0ulja

mate
stick with a brand name and you wont go wrong.
spend a little bit extra it'll take you a long way

i use and sell kingmax flash media products never had a problem with a single unit. I can vouch for that brand

.

I don't argue, you are 100% correct. I am just curious how they do it and how to correctly identify the fake ones.
BTW, I could buy kingmax 64Gb from the same guy, he-he.

**ben10** · 25-01-08, 02:38 PM

Originally Posted by urban_s0ulja

mate
stick with a brand name and you wont go wrong.
spend a little bit extra it'll take you a long way

i use and sell kingmax flash media products never had a problem with a single unit. I can vouch for that brand

.

they are brand name, but only an imitation.
so the only way to find out, is if it's too cheap, then it's a fake.

**cwispy** · 25-01-08, 03:21 PM

you need to be careful with a lot of the chinese memory cards etc as many of them will sell the cards in Gbit sizes rather than Gbyte sizes so an 8Gb card from them is really only 1000Mb in size. I have also seen them playing with the software to make them report weird sizes on the mp3/mp4 players they have ripped off from lots of other places.

cwispy

**fromaron** · 25-01-08, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by cwispy

you need to be careful with a lot of the chinese memory cards etc as many of them will sell the cards in Gbit sizes rather than Gbyte sizes so an 8Gb card from them is really only 1000Mb in size. I have also seen them playing with the software to make them report weird sizes on the mp3/mp4 players they have ripped off from lots of other places.

cwispy

I have heard this as well, but how they can get chip to report 128Gb ????

**cwispy** · 25-01-08, 11:48 PM

With the MP4 players they hack the software, not sure how they are doing it on the usb sticks, i imagine its a similar situation, there is a little bit of software there to tell the pc what it is and they have edited it.

**troyboy** · 29-01-08, 11:23 AM

I did some testing over the weekend in regard to Genuine "2GB Sandisk SD Card Vs Fake 2GB SD Card" and this is what I found:

1) I load the fake 2GB card with JPG files so that I can put it in my digital photo frame to scroll through 000's of photo's. Problem was when the root folder got to 500 odd files (450 MB-550 MB) the card would say "Cannot copy to device. If I created another folder, then fine, I could put unlimited files in there. So I was limited to 500 odd files in the root folder of the fake SD Card.

2) Attempted to copy 000's of photo's onto the genuine 2GB SD Card's root folder and it worked without any drama's. Could fit 2000+ photo's in the root folder without any errors or hiccups.

3) On the fake card, I simply created a folder called "photos" and copied 2000+ photo's into that and then BINGO! Put it in my photo frame and it picked up the folder and started the slide show straight away.

So although they have some limitations I'm not as disappointed with it now that I have worked out that all I need to do is create a folder then dump the files in the folder rather than the root. Providing your photo frame is smart enough to start up from the folder without having to selecting the folder each time, its no real disadvantage.

As stated above ... You get what you pay for.

**ssrattus** · 17-02-08, 02:51 PM

With some fake USB devices you can write to the stated capacity with already compressed files ie zip, rar, jpg etc and all looks good ie directory shows correct files and sizes, but when you copy the files back you will find that only some of the files are OK (ie the real capacity of the drive) and the rest are corrupt.

The firmware inside these fake drives has been modified with compression software.

Here is some info and a tester here:

**z80** · 17-02-08, 07:30 PM

The limitation of the number of files is a windows file system limitation.

The 8gb ones in geelong had me fooled, they are two 4 gig chips which don't allow files to traverse the device boundary.

so...a 4.3gig file cannot ever be stored, and when a folder tries to span two devices it fails.

But it does hold a total of 8 gig of files, just with limitations.

I would have put up with it but.....it was also USB 1.1 so it took an hour and a half to load 2 gigs.

**ssrattus** · 17-02-08, 11:26 PM

Got one here, meant to be a 4GB and is only a 2GB. Currently it has 4 folders with a 700Mb avi in each, The first 2 are OK, the 3rd plays but VLC says the file has an error do you want to fix it and the 4th file shows correct length, even when copied back to the laptop, but is 0 run time in VLC.

It's from dealextreme and others have found the same problem, don't know what they are going to do about it yet.