Anyone recommend a free GUI Partitioner program pls?

[JedClampett]

Well it looks like I have purchased 2 fake USB flash drives jaclaz. Maybe the person that sold them to me on Ebay was duped into buying a fake bunch of these, and sold 2 of them to me in good faith? IIRC there was an email sent out by ebay to warn buyers about this seller. So Ebay do the best they can to protect buyers

I was 100% certain they were really 16GB, but after what you have shown me with RMPrepUSB, I now know how to check any further USB Flash Drives as soon as I purchase them.

I look upon this as an interesting learning experience, and appreciate all your help.

I will be checking out all those other utilities on the RMPrepUSB download page as well.

Here's a screenshot of the tests I did on the supposedly 16 GB Flash drive, on Vista Home Premium.

Armed with this newfound knowledge of how to test a USB Flash Drive, I'm back off to Ebay or Amazon to get myself some proper USB Flash sticks!

[jaclaz]

Yep, I am sorry for your misadventure.

Those sticks are most probably "good" 2 Gb ones.

There are good chances you can "recondition" them to the right size. (2 Gb is better than nothing).

Run on them ChipGenius and report the output:

http://reboot.pro/4661/

jaclaz

[JedClampett]

Right jaclaz. Almost 2GB is OK for some things. At least I will have some idea of how much free space is available.

I'll take a look at that link, and let you know if I can reset the USB chips to report the real size.

Jed

[JedClampett]

Here is the output from running ChipGenius.exe on one of the Fake USB drives.

The only difference for the other 16GB USB drive is the Serial Number, which ends with 07D1.

Is it possible to use a utility program to reprogam the controller chip, so it reports the correct size in MB please?

Edited September 15, 2011 by JedClampett

[jaclaz]

Is it possible to use a utility program to reprogam the controller chip, so it reports the correct size in MB please?

Chip is seemingly MTX208

Vid 1221

Pid 3234

You will need to start trying tools you can find here:

http://flashboot.ru/index.php?name=Files&op=cat&id=14

(you may want to use google translate on the above)

Chipgenius is not necessarily "exact" and the docs on these utilities are normally VERY scarce.

I would try first with this one:

http://flashboot.ru/Files-file-304.html

jaclaz

[JedClampett]

Thanks for that info jaclaz. I went to http://flashboot.ru/ and had a mosey around.

I've also Googled for

Ameco MXT6208 MXT8208

and that turned up some helpfull things, like this site all about how to identify and repair (and report ) fake Flash Drives

http://fixfakeflash.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/mxt8208-vid-1221-pid-3234-repair-fake-flash-drive-solution/

So I really need to study what's on there, and follow the instruction to try and reset my fake 16 GB (2031MB real) flash drives to report the real size. For now I have just created a FAT32 primary partition of 1998 MB. At least I can use the UFD to transfer files to my laptop again.

Edited September 20, 2011 by JedClampett

[JedClampett]

I have just tried to use the UdTools.exe and I get an error message. Here's a screenshot of what happens when I plug the Fake 16 GB USB flash drive into the port:

I was hoping this would work, as the utility interface is English.

My Russian is kaput, and I could not find the download link for the utility on http://flashboot.ru/

Do you have the d/l link for the right utility from flashboot.ru please?

Edit: I have now got rid of the error message, but still cannot appear to reprogram the chip. Some of the fields are blanked out, like this:

Is there something I have missed?

Edited September 17, 2011 by JedClampett

[steve6375]

Is there something I have missed?

Most of these chipset specific utilities for reprogramming USB Flash drives only work under XP. They don't work under Vista/7/SVR2k8 as the drivers are written for XP.

Edited December 19, 2011 by steve6375

[jaclaz]

Is there something I have missed?

Most of these chipset specific utilities for reprogramming USB Flash drives only work under XP. They don't work under Vista/7/SVR2k8 as the drivers are written for XP.

But this has to be tested specifically.

Some utilities need to install a particular driver, but many will work through the "standard" USB driver (these one seems to be of this latter type).

The issue is rather which settings are needed to be changed.

In that tool the capacity is on the THIRD tab "Factory settings".

I would try this version of the tool:

http://flashboot.ru/Files-file-415.html

If you get this one:

http://flashboot.ru/Files-file-262.html

it has inside some quick instructions (in Chinese) that may (or may completely fail to) be useful.

Understanding how these tools work is often a nightmare and a hit 'n miss game.

jaclaz