I've bought one of those cheap 2TB pen drives online, being aware that was almost surely a scam, but I still decided to do that. The pen shows actual 1.9 TB of capacity which is obviously not true, and I'm now running H2testw to see the actual capacity, and the program has written more than 36000 MB of data, so it should supposedly be at least a 64 GB pen, which for the money wouldn't be bad.
So, how can I format the pen drive in order to show its actual capacity when I open it?
The way these drives are faked to show higher capacity is by modifying/hacking the firmware, so the drive reports more storage then there actually is. I think you would need to somehow revert that firmware change. But keep in mind that these drives are notorious for losing and corrupting your data once you exceed its actual storage limit. The fact that you can write to the drive does not necessarily mean you can read the data back.
That being said, a quick google turned up this page which outlines a procedure to flash corrected firmware using MPTools. I have never used it so use at your own risk: http://www.myblog.bloggybloggy.com/usb-key-fix-mptools-11-05-2008/
Edit: Also, read these: https://fixfakeflash.wordpress.com/faq-read/ https://flashchiptech.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/should-you-repair-a-fake-usb-flash-pen-drive/
Unless the pen drive contains one of the popular controller chips (Microv, ICreate or Alcor families) and memory storage chips (Samsung & Hynix) finding the correct low level software program will be a challenge. You will spend a significant amount of time looking for solutions and may not be successful in your efforts.
You may find some software on a website that you think could fix your drive and inadvertently download a virus or other forms of malware. McAfee’s Siteminder identifies some of the download sites as containing malicious software or software that breaches browser security.
The drive may also be irreparably damaged during the repair process. Using the wrong software can destroy the flash storage chip. Using a program someone else used with their previous sitting i.e. leaving the ECC open could destroy access to the storage chip, as information in the controller is over written.
Could you ever trust a repaired drive with your data files or pictures? The unscrupulous creators of the fake flash drives maximise their profits by using the lowest cost chips they can purchase. The quality of these chips range from average to poor. When the chips fail you may be lucky and just loose all the files that you have stored on the drive, or worse – the contents of the files can be corrupted and remain undetected by you.
I don't get the question. The Format shows what makers of this drive intended to show, it is what is returned by some SCSI-like SENSE command. Which is embedded in bridge firmware. So any other "format" will return the same result, unless you use full format with sector tests, which might fail.
To get the actual drive capacity, you better run some real tasks to test it, some real data. One way is to simply copy a full directory of DVD movies, few hundred gigabytes, fill the disk with copies, and then test if the movies play back. The alternative is to get an older PC running something like Windows XP, and run Scandisk in DOS mode, and see if it ever finishes the job.
