Fake Flash Drives.

I've bought 5 flash drives from a store near by, every single one has died after writing 8GB of data on it.

It's now 8.4 MB RAW, I can't repair the god damn thing, this is so fucking annoying cause the data corrupts.

Looks like I've got to disassemble my laptop to install shit onto it grr.

Edit did some "research" ripped the actual NAND off and it turns out that the 8.4MB is the actual "firmware chip??"

so using dd and copying 8GB worth of files fucking killed the NAND

gonna get some high quality kingston drives now on

Maxx said:

Ouch. Hope you didn't lose too much time or data in the process. All 5 failing suggests something very out of the ordinary. Even the cheapest non-brands aren't THAT bad! Bad batch at the factory? something bad happening in transit like.... water?

Maybe even a flaky port on your laptop?

Click to expand...

Nope appears just to be bad chips, I did some digging and it's a common problem with $2 chinese flash drives as the chips in them are low capacity or generally bad chips that will die.

It's a real shame though

If you just did a dd over the drive (i.e. /dev/sdX vs a specific partition (like /dev/sdX1), all you did is overwrite the partition table with whatever you were writing to it. If whatever image you were writing over it doesn't contain a (valid) partition table, that would explain why it's showing up as raw and appears to be "broken".

The drives are probably fine. If you want to test, just use something like fdisk or parted to re-create the partition, then put a file system on said partition, and it'll probably work fine again.

BoundCoder said:

If you just did a dd over the drive (i.e. /dev/sdX vs a specific partition (like /dev/sdX1), all you did is overwrite the partition table with whatever you were writing to it. If whatever image you were writing over it doesn't contain a (valid) partition table, that would explain why it's showing up as raw and appears to be "broken".

The drives are probably fine. If you want to test, just use something like fdisk or parted to re-create the partition, then put a file system on said partition, and it'll probably work fine again.

Click to expand...

I know, i use DD often, the drives are literally fucked, after DD i formatted the drive, put some data on it than for some reason the data became all corrupt, and than the drive didn't work again.

The 8.4MB raw is just the firmware I would assume, because when I ripped out the actual NAND chip, it still detected as 8.4MB so.. yeah.

Yes, I use DD all the time this crap never happens with kingston drives, just shitty chinese ones, 99% of the time the drives works after recreating the partitions with diskpart, diskutil or gparted.

but this time, the actual disk utilities are reporting 8.4MB raw, no matter what i do, even cleaning the drive in diskpart does nothing, yikes

The image I wrote on there was a 8GB (bootable file) it worked fine until I formated the drive and copied data to it, than the drive started acting funny, than died on me


examples of file names (corruption)

2983/03/02 - cıÍk«t∏z|fó±ëë z≥„»©ö’?ùYø9ˇŒ›„/±Ó∑_.Ïfi«OT
2032/01/03 - ?{ˇˇ"I»ÓÌ`Å∏dùN´“F∞⁄F©`T

I have a 128gb flash drive that I used for awhile, but now when I check it's properties it has zero bytes.

You get what you pay for. I've had a 512mb kingston drive for over 10 years now (got it when they first released a 512). It still works great, and probably cost me less overall than if I had gotten a cheap 128, then replaced it a couple of years later, then again, and again.

Slomo said:

You get what you pay for. I've had a 512mb kingston drive for over 10 years now (got it when they first released a 512). It still works great, and probably cost me less overall than if I had gotten a cheap 128, then replaced it a couple of years later, then again, and again.

Click to expand...

Actually the price I paid was reasonable for a 8GB flash drive to be honest with you, good brand name flash drives are roughly $10 I can get a good kingston flash drive for 5-10 bucks so I was expecting the 8GB non-brand to be good, but didn't expect it to just die on me, I thought it might of just been once off, oh boy did I learn that wasn't the case ahaha.

I paid $10 for this shitty USB, generally I pay around that for a proper kingston which mind you are very reliable and last years, my last kingston lasted 2-3 years before it died, but even than i used DD on it quite often to write OSX to the USB (for booting with a PC)

Only reason I got the shitty generic USB was because I didn't want to travel all the way to the city to pick on up, and I didn't want to wait 5 weeks to get one from ebay (even the ebay ones i don't trust)

Sure, if it was a $2 flash drive or $1 It would raise an eye brow and I wouldn't touch it with a five foot poll, but considering the price, I would of assumed even though being no name generic USB that it would be at least good. (but it turns out there worth fucking nothing and the guy at the shop is just selling them for $11) fucking bastard he is xD

I kinda worked out they were fake after the 3rd one dying sadly, took me some digging to work that one out as I've never come across a fake before and didn't know what to expect.

I assumed it would just corrupt or overwrite the data, not destroy the NAND completely.

There are so many fake USB sticks out there. Pretty poor that you bought them from a real shop, though. At least it should be easy to get a refund.

Sorry to inform you, but $10 for ANY flash drive is NOT a "bargain" or "good" price.

Slomo said:

You get what you pay for. I've had a 512mb kingston drive for over 10 years now (got it when they first released a 512). It still works great, and probably cost me less overall than if I had gotten a cheap 128, then replaced it a couple of years later, then again, and again.

Click to expand...

Mine was a 128Gb, not 128Mb.

Kenn said:

Mine was a 128Gb, not 128Mb.

Click to expand...

What model is it? 128GB drives exist, but a lot are fakes? where did you buy it from pal?

eBay - and it did have the capacity. I stored multiple off-line backups of my PC on it weekly for about a year before it just stopped working.

Kenn said:

View attachment 29281
eBay - and it did have the capacity. I stored multiple off-line backups of my PC on it weekly for about a year before it just stopped working.

Click to expand...

$12.99 yeah, That sounds like a fake to be honest with you :/

Usually if there not fakes, they have bad chips which die after a certain amount of data is written on them.

A good 128GB drive is like $50 I think.

I have 2 128GB PNY flash drives that have been working fine for me. I bought them on Newegg a while back.

I have found a number of cheap flash drives have problems not with the chips in them but with the connector.

On many the 4 strips inside are not plated with a anti corrosion surface.
The slightest acid or salt in the air will discolor these strips and change the conductivity.