The flash drive from China is not formatted. How to find out the real capacity of a Chinese flash drive
In the previous article we talked about... This topic is relevant because Chinese sellers are massively deceiving gullible buyers by passing off 4, 8, 16 GB flash drives as large-capacity drives - 64, 128, 256, 500 GB and even terabytes. If you also fall for such a high-tech “scam,” then most likely you want to return the actual volume to the flash drive you purchased.
The operating system recognizes such drives and shows the promised, for example, 500 GB. However, most likely, it will be impossible to write more than 7 GB onto such a flash drive. Therefore, to make it convenient to use, and not to “catch” a recording error every time when there is not enough free space, we will return the real volume to our information storage device.
We return the flash drive to its real size using the MyDiskFix utility
First, open it using the program H2testw We analyze the flash drive. When we see the report, we will need to copy the number of normal sectors. In the screenshot below this number is 14299127 in the line:
6.8 GByte OK (14299127 sectors)
Having found out the number of sectors, we proceed to the second utility. . and run MyDiskFix.exe from administrator name(right click on the file and select run as administrator). The program has problems with encoding, so the full procedure is described below.
- Select the desired flash drive from the list.
- Check the bottom checkbox.
- From the H2testw report, enter the number of sectors physically present in the drive.
- Press the start button (top right).
Windows that appear while the utility is running can be closed. When everything is complete, a window will appear to format the flash drive.
Chinese flash drives: how to find out the real size, make a recovery and return the real volume of a Chinese memory card or flash drive
If you are reading this text, then I dare to assume that you have become the proud owner of a Chinese flash drive. If so, then you have come to the right place.
The cunning yellow-faced brothers make the firmware of a Chinese flash drive so that the computer sees 16, 32, 64GB, etc. available memory on a flash drive, although the actual size is much smaller.
It's like it's copied onto it large volume information, but you won’t be able to read it all later. Here they are, Chinese USB flash drives, and not only USB, but also all kinds of memory cards.
Why are Chinese flash drives bad?
Cheating with Chinese flash drives may be due to rejected NAND memory.
How this is done: buy rejected memory chips from factories or landfills. They are sold by weight, and the price is about $0.5 per chip after selecting completely dead microcircuits. It can be not only 16 Gb chips - any capacity will do. There may be two of 8, or one of 64, but with a bunch of defective pages. Everything goes into “production” - cuttings of large chips, combining several small chips inside one device, combining scraps of large chips
Cheating with Chinese flash drives may be due to the NAND memory being less than the declared capacity:
How this is done: they buy chips with a small amount of memory, and increase the capacity to the required one through a passport, that is, with the “get ID” command, the flash drive will give away as many gigabytes as is written on it. To prevent the deception from being detected immediately, the recording on such a device is either looped (the gigabyte has run out - we start writing again), or emulated (the gigabyte has run out - we pretend that we are writing, but we are not writing anything).
Such flash drives can be used for everyday needs: music in the car, watching a movie on TV, and the like. The main thing to remember is that at any time Chinese flash drive, restored using the method described below, may refuse.
So how can you restore the real size of a Chinese flash drive?
In this case, you need to do the following:
1. Determine the actual volume of the Chinese flash drive.
To do this we use the program h2testw ver 1.4 ().
The verification process consists of two stages: - writing special files 1.h2w, .h2w, etc. of 1 GB in size to the flash drive until the entire volume is completely filled and reading what is written.
The media is likely to be defective.
7.5 GByte OK (15924224 sectors) — remember these numbers somewhere.
7.9 GByte DATA LOST (16776192 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
7.9 GByte corrupted (16776192 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x00000001d5fa2000
Expected: 0x00000001d5fa2000
Found: 0x0000000000000000
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 3.97 MByte/s
Reading speed: 10.2 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4
We see that 7.5 GByte OK- this is the real size of a Chinese flash drive.
2. formatting Chinese flash drives true to size.
Programlin will help us with this MyDiskFix (MyDiskFix download from the link at the bottom of the page). It has problems with encoding, so the sequence of actions is as follows.
In the top window, select your Chinese flash drive.
On the left, move the dot down (means low-level formatting).
In the window on the right (where 0) enter the sector number - in my case 15924224
Press the top button to the right of the “Debug” button - the button (YЁГ и & РУёр)
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Chinese online platforms, such as AliExpress, offer a huge selection of goods at reasonable prices, and sometimes at incredibly low prices. But very often there is a catch behind the cheapness. Today we’ll look at how not to be deceived when buying Chinese flash drives on the Internet. The classic scam scheme, as it can be called, consists of selling cheap flash drives with large sizes. Outwardly everything looks good, when you insert such a flash drive into your computer, the size is displayed as on the website when selling. The buyer sees that the flash drive is working and gives the go-ahead to transfer money to the seller. Don't trust Chinese flash drive sellers - never! Trust must always be tested.
Scheme of scam by Chinese flash drive sellers. Now let’s look at why you shouldn’t immediately confirm receipt of the goods. In most cases, it will not work correctly and this is fraught not only with lost money for a low-quality flash drive, but also with loss important information. The Chinese inflate a smaller flash drive to a larger one and sell it for the price of a larger flash drive (for example, 8 GB, inflate it to 64 GB and sell it at a discount at the price of 64 GB - very profitable). But don’t make too much of it, an 8 GB flash drive will not store 64 GB of information and this flash drive will not work normally without certain operations.
Determining the actual size of a flash drive. You can’t trust the inscriptions and stickers on a flash drive, just like the display size on a computer. For this we need a small, but extremely useful program for Windows h2testw_1.4 . Download and launch. We choose a language: German or English, there is no Russian, but the program is extremely simple and does not require a Russian interface language. Next, insert the flash drive into the computer and select it Selecttarget(pre-formatted if not empty) . Next, click Write+ Verify.
Now you can turn on the movie and watch it, because... This operation is quite long (depending on the recording speed of the flash drive and its size).
How h2testw works. During this test, the size of the flash drive is completely filled with small files, which are formed into 1 GB files until completely filled. After filling the entire size of the flash drive, a report will be displayed and verification will begin automatically. If the flash drive is “bloated”, then this will be visible after obtaining the correct size and further waiting for the end of the test of all memory is impractical (a waste of time).
Analysis of results h2testw. After finishing the determination of the “good” size (in the screenshot, the second line is “7.4 GByte OK...”), the definition of the “lost” volume comes. If there is no change in the second line with a “good” size, you can stop the test with the “Abort” button. Of all the results, the most important indicator for us is the second line, which indicates the actual size (number of sectors) of the flash drive.
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Restoring the real size of MyDiskFix. After auditing the size of the flash drive, we return its real size to the program MyDiskFix . Don't be scared by the incomprehensible symbols in this utility; this is due to Chinese characters; apparently, this is the native language for the program. Next, set the settings (numbers in the screenshot):
1) select a flash drive;
2) set low-level formatting;
3) indicate the real number of sectors for the flash drive (we take it from the h2testw report, second line, for my flash drive the correct number of sectors was 15618999);
4) launch, click yes/ok in subsequent windows.
Error during operation MyDiskFix. In my case, after launching and agreeing to restore the flash drive, an error popped up: « Can NOT open drive H: [ Mass Storage Device]! Please close the program which is using the drive and try again." Its meaning is that the MyDiskFix program cannot complete its operation due to the use of the flash drive by another application.
I did not notice the use of this flash drive by another application, so I had to restart the computer and start the system in safe mode with loading network drivers (you should press F8 when starting the computer). There MyDiskFix also “sweared”, but did its job.
Final verdict. That's all. MyDiskFix will offer format already the “correct” flash drive, what needs to be done, and then for particularly precise people I recommend auditing this flash drive again in the h2testw program . After undetected problems, you can use the flash drive for its intended purpose.
Good afternoon. I have finally reached civilization and can once again please you with an interesting and, I hope, useful article.
I came across one flash drive from China and it was sold for a rather modest price, like 64 GB. But the person who bought it began to have doubts about its performance, since some of the recorded files stopped opening. Of course, he was not aware that our brothers in communism had long ago learned to flash controllers so that it would show a larger volume than it actually is and write files as if cyclically. The system is very cunning and I don’t fully know how it’s all implemented. I remember at the very beginning, when I first heard about such a Chinese trick, some people on the hub shouted that such a controller would cost much more than a flash drive. But today this occurs on every second flash drive ordered from China. But let's move on to the most delicious part and today the article will be divided into two parts. The first is about how to recognize a fake (which will make it possible to open a dispute on Ali and get your money back), the second is how to get a flash drive into working condition with its real capacity.
We recognize a fake and determine the real capacity of a flash drive
- To do this, we need a small utility called h2testw, download it from Yandex.Disk and unpack the archive. We launch h2testw.exe and for convenience (I don’t know German) switch to English. Click the “Select target” button.
- We select our problematic flash drive. Be careful not to make a mistake, otherwise you will lose all the data on the flash drive.
- Click the “Write+Verify” button.
- The process of filling the flash card will begin, and then the program will check how much was recorded and how much is actually on the storage media. It took me a little over two hours to create a flash drive with a true capacity of 8 GB (about an hour for writing and an hour for reading).
- Now let's get the flash card in order so that it can be used without the risk of data loss (as far as possible with a Chinese counterfeit card:) and for this we need one value, which is in the report. So before closing the window, copy or rewrite the number of sectors for the working volume.
Fixing the display of volume for a fake flash card
I should warn you that since we work with fake flash cards, they can break at any time and you use this method at your own peril and risk. If your fake fails after this procedure, then thank the Chinese, not me :)
So, download the second utility from the link. And we launch it. This is a Chinese program and don’t be surprised by the lack of text on the buttons, the main thing is to click on the right ones, and that’s what this site exists for. By the way, I had a problem with it working until I ran it as administrator. The program cursed as if the flash drive was being used for something. Therefore, when starting, close all windows that may be using the flash drive. And if that doesn’t help, use run as administrator.
- Launched, select the desired flash drive at the top. I don’t advise you to make mistakes, double-check. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chinese increase the volume with the same program.
- We move the point to the bottom point, this is a low-level formatting mode - just what the doctor ordered for this Chinese fake g...
Unfortunately, recently cases of dishonesty of some manufacturers (mainly Chinese, second tier) have become more frequent - they sell very large flash drives for seemingly ridiculous money. In fact, the capacity of the installed memory turns out to be much less than declared, although the same 64 GB and higher are displayed in the properties. Today we will tell you how to find out the real capacity of a flash drive.
The fact is that the enterprising Chinese have come up with a clever way of flashing the firmware of a storage device controller - processed in this way, it will be detected as more capacious than it actually is.
There is a small utility called h2testw. Using it, you can conduct a test that will determine the real capacity of your flash drive.
- Launch the utility. By default it is active German, and for convenience it is better to switch to English - check the box as in the screenshot below.
- The next step is choosing a flash drive. Click on the button "Select target".
In the dialog box "Conductor" choose your drive. - To start testing, click on "Write+verify".
The essence of the check is that the memory of the flash drive is gradually filled with service files in H2W format, each 1 GB in size. This will take a lot of time - up to 3 hours, or even more, so you will have to be patient. - For real flash drives, the program window at the end of the check will look like this.
For fake ones, yes.
Be careful - during the test the information recorded on the flash drive will be deleted!
The marked item is the actual capacity of your drive. If you are going to use it in the future, then copy the number of sectors present - it is written to the right of the actual volume of the flash drive.
How to make such a flash drive show the real volume
Such storage devices can be taught to display the correct capacity - to do this, you need to configure the controller to display the correct indicators. The MyDiskFix utility will help us with this.
- We run the utility as an administrator - right-click on the executable file and select the appropriate context menu item.
Don't be afraid of the little ones - the program is Chinese. First, select your flash drive from the drop-down list at the top.
We remind you again that during the process, all data on the drive will be deleted. - In the block on the left, check the bottom checkbox to activate low-level formatting.
