FAKE 8GB USB drive

Hello,
I just bought 2 usb thumb drives off ebay (yes, the hong kong special) both drives were from different sellers but they both ripped me off. They have managed to somehow trick the OS into thinking that it is 8gb. I tried to copy 8 1gb mpeg2 files to the drive. They copied over fine but only the first 4 would play, the other 4 would open but the file was blank. This happened to both drives I bought. The question I have is, is there anyway I can format these drives back to their real size? As it is now, if I go over 4GB the data is simply lost. I would like to formatt the drive so the OS thinks it's 4GB so I can use it like a reagular drive, as it is now there are huge risks of data loss if I'm not watching it very closely. Does anyone know how they were able to modify these and if there is a way to change them back? Thanks!!!

 

Try creating 2 folders on the thumb drives and put 4 of the 1gb files in each folder. Sometimes there's limitations on how much 'raw' data can be in the root directory of these devices. There may also be an issue if they are FAT32. I think they need to be set up as NTFS in order to work to their full capacity, but I may be wrong about this; maybe it's formatted as FAT (or FAT16) and needs to be FAT32... I don't remember, but I do remember seeing something about this a while ago. Also, a while back there were some counterfeit Sony 8gb drivers being sold on eBay with the model number 'SONY 8G Model USM8024' so hopefully this is NOT what happened in your case....

 

Ya I've done a few more hours of reading, and I was hosed with the small drive. Apparently there is a program that will reformatt them (iFormat_v418.exe) but it only runs with windows 2000 with a usb 1.1 drive, which I do have at the folks house. I'll test it tommorow and let you guys know. I've been doing a lot of reading and aparently they are icreate chipset because those are reprogrammable to look bigger.

 

Other/s have reported this through MG before. Wish you best of luck in formatting to 8 gigs.

Can you get a refund from eBay/PayPal if you have been ripped off? :cry

Bazza

 

I tried all 3 programs I found on windows 2000 but none of them will recognize the usb drive (the programs, windows reads it fine) I tried running them under XP with compatibility mode, I even gave vista a try (blah). Does anyone have any ideas of programs that might do what I want that run in XP. Holy fragmented sentences...

 

I tried that tool, it just reformatts it to 8GB again. I know that this is only a 4GB chip, it's a common scam they do, they say it's samsung memory but really it's icreate memory that allows you to put a hacked program on it's brain somehow to make it tell the os it's 8GB, anything over 4GB and it dosn't error or anything, the processor in the usb drive is sending the data to a non exsistant chip, it's litterally making your data vanish into thin air.

 

External storage devices are usually FAT32 which has limitation on how much data you can transfer at once. Try formatting the drive to NTFS.

 

You can't format to NTFS in XP, I tried to reformat in vista and it errored. It formats to FAT32 and it's not the 4GB thing, I looked a little closer and really it's only 2GB not 4GB as I've been stateing all along. Its nothing to do with the formatting, it's the actual device has been reprogrammed to look bigger (you can do that with the icreate chips, they are cheap). I just need to know how to undo it so I can use the 2GB without losing data everytime the drive exceeds it's tru capacity

 

Check out how to do it in XP at my post #5 in thread http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=105071

Thanks to Halo, I was able to reformat all my USB memory sticks to NTFS.
Remember if you do this, W98SE (if anyone you know still uses it) will not be able to read your NTFS stick. Bazza

 

Reformatting to NTSC dosn't helo, OS stills sees it as 8GB when it's only 2GB

 

Can you partition these devices? If so, try creating a single 4 GB partition and see if that works reliably. Just leave the rest of the storage space (which isn't really there anyway apparently) unformatted.

This won't likely work either, but it's all I could think of.

Good luck!

 

Sorry bout the late reply, exams and all...

So I tried to partition in patition magic, but only my 3 hard drives showed up, not the usb drive. So I tried fromatiing it from FAT32. Anyways, when I try to format it to NTFS I always get an error "The operation was not complete sucessfully". Can I partition this with another program in Fat32 format? What will the next OS I put this drive in see? Will it recognize the partitions right off the bat?

 

I don't know if any other partitioning program will allow you to format and/or partition your USB drive or not. A good free one is GPartEd (Gnome Partition Editor): http://majorgeeks.com/GParted_d5757.html

To use this program you'll have to unpack the download (I think it's a self-extracting package -- just double click it to start the decompression). I think it creates an iso file which you then have to burn to a CD (you must burn the iso image to a CD, not just copy the file as you would a data file). Then, with the bootable GPartEd CD in your CD drive, reboot with your BIOS set to boot from CD first.

You may need further help getting started with GPartEd but it is a great free partitioning utility. The problem is there don't seem to be any instructions or help files included yet, at least not when I downloaded and installed it about a month or so ago.

The main obstacle for me was finding the right first menu selection to get the program to start.

If you want to try it and need more help creating the bootable iso CD for GPartEd or in getting the program to run once you've created the bootable CD, then post back and let us know how far you've gotten.

Otherwise, if you know of other free partitioning/formatting programs I don't think you've got much to lose by trying them to see what happens.

 

Sorry, Instead of posting a brand new topic I will reply on this one since it allready exist.

I recently got duped on ebay the same way, i tried to format and it does not even give me the option to format the USB in NTFS it only gives me the option for fat32 and 8 gigs, but it is only a 256MB drive! I cant read chinese but i see the 256MB on the back and have a clue. I made an agreement with the seller because i really needed one so I got it for 5$ (shipping included plus it matches with my PC)

How do I reformat this thing? I seen the link but i need to format it with windows not linux, and can i format it in say gentoo to the correct file size it has? I just want to reformat it, so it shows the correct MB's left that are unused, thanks!

 

Definately make a new topic please. We do not like to see old threads bumped.