Fake capacity Chi-Flash Drives on the WEB

mroboto

Super Member
Recently, I ordered a few USB flash drives from Chinese sellers, and on three flash drives, I got two fake capacity drives, this is a real plague for years on the WEB market.

One fake 32Gb and one fake 64Gb , they tested 14.8Gb and 15.1Gb OK (Average for 16Gb flash drive).

I test all my flash drives using H2testw 1.4 , very helpful for detecting fake capacity flash drives.

These drives worth nothing, except if you are able to flash the controler chip memory with a tool from the chip manufacturer (Hard to find the right tool) to give them their real capacity, otherwise, they will only corrupt data.

I hope to be refunded right away when I will show the H2testw logs to the sellers, but the sellers will cancel the transaction, and I will not be able to leave negative feedbacks.

I recommend to do the same.

Or, if you have more courage, leave them explicit negative feedbacks.
 
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On eBay, one seller have over 20000 positive feedbacks (97.2% Good), but I think he is new at selling flash drives.

And the other seller have more than 2000 positive feedbacks (99.7% Good).

I think that most people who have purchased fake capacity flash drives don't realize what trouble they own.

Only when they lose their data, they start to question themselves about the quality of the product.
 
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Happy new year!

After my message, the first seller asked me if I want him to resend another flash drive, or get refunded, I said refund.

The last time I was in the same situation, a seller resent me another fake flash drive, and finally refunded me after I tested and sent messages about the 2nd flash drive.

I just sent a message to the second seller, I restarted H2testw because it was slow to finish, and it runs all night and still haven't finished the more it reads the flash drive, the more the speed is slow, the flash drive act like a deffective drive as well as fake capacity.
 
and you are saying nothing of the trojan software resident on almost every chinese usb thumb drive - which you can do nothing to detect it* or flush it as it is hardware/rom based on the (valid) pretext that the chip layout is not that of RAM and the driver software is needed to organize it at real time

(*you can, if you are clever, detect when you get a hardware driven interrupt that spawns a process to open a web port)

It is, after all, how 'they' infected the iranians with stuxnet

PS: you dont wanna know what is imbedded in your hard drive firmware...
 
I never had a malware from a USB flash drive, and I doubt the virus was embedded in the flash drive controler memory, the malware is a file.

Drives autorun is always disabled on my computers, and I always format flash drives when received, prior to test with H2testw
 
I never had a malware from a USB flash drive, and I doubt the virus was embedded in the flash drive controler memory, the malware is a file.

Drives autorun is always disabled on my computers, and I always format flash drives when received, prior to test with H2testw
thats the sticky of it. you aint formatting jack. You are telling a device 'I would like this' and it says 'ok sure'. what really happens is hidden from you.

sadly, when it comes to modern hardware, the world you think exists, does not.
 
thats the sticky of it. you aint formatting jack. You are telling a device 'I would like this' and it says 'ok sure'. what really happens is hidden from you.

sadly, when it comes to modern hardware, the world you think exists, does not.

Unfortunately, this is true. You really have to watch the origin of the ROM\BIOS chips that come in gear.
I just give up, I assume I'm always infected. I assume backups are infected as well. USB drives are crazy dangerous.
I learned and started paying attention to this sort of thing way back when Sony sold music CD's with rootkits embedded, infected everyone who played the CD (DVD? forget now) in a computer. Even Sony couldn't get it undone when caught.
 
Bought a video card from China, was 3 generations behind what it was advertised as. Got $ back.
 
I encountered honest Chinese sellers too,

I made a lot of good transaction with them.

You know, the most common swivel flash drives from China that come in multiple colors variations, and that often are faked.

I have a real 128Gb USB 3 like that, (117Gb for Windows and H2testw), I paid the price too, approx 40$.

The most faked stuff from China is the low cost USB flash drives.
 
I heard about this 10 years ago, since then I will only buy flash memory in stores.

With that now, I will also only buy my IC's and capacitors from mouser, and not from auction. I think I once got some fake 3080's from there. It turned a sort of working monosynth to a paperweight in mere moments.
 
Mouser or Digikey won't accept Paypal as payment method, I buy capacitors on PartsConexion when I need a lot, and individually on eBay when I'm convinced that it is a good seller.
 
Why anyone would buy from a Chinese seller when these things are dirt cheap anyway is a mystery to me.
 
Because Chinese sellers are the only that sells these on eBay.

And when I see US sellers, sometimes, shipping from US to Canada is like 17.88$ when it is free or sometimes 1,99 or 2.99$ shipped from China.

When I say 17.88 , I just saw 1 piece .02uf 3KV ceramic capacitor, (approx 1 gram) at this rate.

A few years ago, shipping from US was acceptable at approx. 3.99$ , 5,99$ but now :(
 
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Mouser or Digikey won't accept Paypal as payment method, I buy capacitors on PartsConexion when I need a lot, and individually on eBay when I'm convinced that it is a good seller.
I have only ever used paypal for mouser...and I think digikey too...
 
I found the trick to fix some recent ChipBank chips flash drives that CBM209X_UMPToolV7100(2018-08-24) won't recognize and APToolV7100(2018-01-19) won't flash corectly,

You need to check the ??????? cases, and I also checked 8bit case in APTool settings in order to flash with it first and make the drive recognized by CBM209X_UMPToolV7100(2018-08-24) after, and after, it is possible to fix.

The drive is then flashed to be recognized with his real capacity 16 and 32 Gb in my case, and don't corrupt data anymore.

ChipBank tools for controler chips can be found here: https://www.usbdev.ru/files/chipsbank/

Alcor tools for controler chips here: https://www.usbdev.ru/files/alcor/

Phison tools for controler chips here: https://www.usbdev.ru/files/phison/

Innostor tools for controler chips https://www.usbdev.ru/files/innostor/

I never had a fake flash drive with Phison controler chip, but Alcor and ChipBank often.

If you want to know what brand your controler is, use ChipGenius: https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/ChipGenius.shtml

ChipBank APTool Settings I used in order to make it recognized by CBM209X_UMPToolV7100(2018-08-24)

:APTools Settings.jpg
 
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Prior to recently, I directly asked a seller who sells low prices flash drives to test two flash drives using H2testw, because I don't want to have fake, and explained that this practice is frauld, and if he have the proof, he can fix the problem, but if I have a proof, he can only refund me, and often, sellers don't even know they sells fake flash.

His reply to me is that they don't offer a testing service for flash drives, I can buy and test, and if they are false, I will be refunded.

So, I bought them, if they are fake, I will have two flash drives with lower capacity than 64Gb , maybe 16 Gb, to fix with ChipBank or Alcor tools for free.
 
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