So I bought a flash drive in China...

[brjames]

I was recently in China and, foolishly, bought a flash drive from some con artist. Yeah, I know the rule: "If it's too good to be true...", but in my defense, it was late and I wasn't thinking right.

Anyway I've got this flash drive that thinks its a 16GB drive. The actual capacity is probably closer to 1GB (maybe 512MB), but I dont know how to find out for sure and get it to think its something sane. I've tried reformatting but it still thinks its 16GB. Once its reformatted, I can copy up to 16GB on the drive, its just that all but the last 1GB become extremely corrupted.

Any advice for how to fix it?

 

[origami]

I h ave another good story. my parents went to china and they brought some ipod-look-alike mp3 players. the sales people claimed that it was 20gb, and when my dad looked at the capacity on the LCD of the device it also said "20gb." but after he returned to the US, and tried to put songs on the mp3 player, he could only put one song, and the the memory was full.
so, never buy cheap electronics in China.

 

[Goi]

At least you didn't get this

There are some legit DAPs from China. The Meizu M6 and the Telcast come to mind.

 

[Kinslayer777]

I'm sorry I can't offer you any advice, but there are legit fakes. Funny enough I was in an upscale store in town in Thialand (close enough...) and they sold both fakes and reals as advertised so , but I didnt bother i doubted there fakes were any higher quality then the cheaper one i bought outside that worked fine. Granted, i shouldnt have, because i bought another one and prices were down to the same non-legit cost in two months [once i came back] off newegg but it works very well.

 

[MadAmos]

Originally posted by: Goi
At least you didn't get this

There are some legit DAPs from China. The Meizu M6 and the Telcast come to mind.

I would like to hear the story behind that picture

 

[AsianriceX]

Originally posted by: Goi
At least you didn't get this

There are some legit DAPs from China. The Meizu M6 and the Telcast come to mind.

Hilarious. I can't imagine the face someone would have when they'd discover that.

 

[mrbill14]

I fell for this scam too... I e-mailed the eBay seller and he (luckly) refunded my money.

However, in the meantime, I found out that "they" use a (kinda) ghost program that formats the drive, but reports to Windows Explorer almost any capacity you want.

I believe you can find the program here:

http://www.icreate.com.tw/img/soc/i5062/User%20Utility/iFormat_v418.exe this is for Sony diskkeys that have the iCreate 5062 controller.

http://www.icreate.com.tw/img/soc/i5122/User%20Utility/iFormat2_v112.zip this is for diskkeys that have the iCreate 5122 controller.


Let us know your results!

 

[mrbill14]

Somebody have reported having better luck with this formatting tool:

Freeport v3.27:
http://seoulcc.org/pdx8_2k_v327.zip


I guess I should put in the standard disclaimer here.... Be careful as this format/erases and could destroy your thumb drive. (But, after all, it's already fubar'ed anyway, right?)

 

[mrbill14]

Here's a snippet of what you will do/see when you run the Freeport program:

PROGRAM USED: Port free production program 3.27

STRINGS: Leave all settings as they are.
VID: 1043
PID: 8006
Vendor String: GENERIC
Product: FLASH DISK
Manufacture String: SONY
Product String: USB FLASH DRIVE

FLASH TEST: Tick the REPRODUCTION box only
Leave all other boxes un-ticked

LUNs: Leave all boxes empty except the last box
Tick the box and call your drive what you like
I kept mine "SONY"

Both CAPACITY ADJUST & COPY-FILE I left blank.

OTHERS: Tick box REMOVABLE.

The above settings worked fine and was quite quick!
But I was "gutted" to see my pile of 4GB flash drives turned into a worthless pile of 64MB units!!!!

 

[Goi]

those compressed links don't work.

 

[mrbill14]

Sorry about that...

Edited the links.

 

[dirkwilson]

Yup, if you don't know what' s going on you can be taken.

I work with a company in China and they manufacture iPod look-alikes up to 2 GB.

There are legit companies in China, but with it have 1/5 of the world's pop, it's easy to get taken.

If you ever have some questions, let me know.