9240 USB Memory Stick - Flash Drives

I would suggest if you buy a USB memory stick / flash drive in the Philippines or other eastern locations that you have it checked prior to purchase. Have the vendor demonstrate it filled to capacity with files. Remove the stick from the PC and reinsert the stick and check that all the files are still there.

This is a 32kB file [32kb] approx. file 32768 characters according to Open Office writer. The file only contains the characters 0-9 & # and mainly 12345678 repeated over and over.

This file copybyt_04.cat [1kb] approx. is used to copy the 32k file and subsequent files at the DOS prompt and a 1 Gb file is generated after 15- 20 minutes. The file extension requires be changed to Bat rather than Cat prior to use.

# This "DIR" list was generated at the DOS prompt :-

31/12/2015  09:15             1 313 copybyt_04.bat
31/12/2015  09:31            32 768 32k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35            65 537 64k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35           131 073 128k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35           262 145 256k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35           524 289 512k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35         1 048 577 1024k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35         2 097 153 2048k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35         4 194 305 4096k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35         8 388 609 8192k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35        16 777 217 16384k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35        33 554 433 32768k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:35        67 108 865 63536k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:36       134 217 729 131072k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:36       268 435 457 262144k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:38       536 870 913 524288k_Bytes_01.txt
04/01/2016  18:41     1 073 741 825 1048576k_Bytes_01.txt
#

If the vendor will not check prior to your purchase keep the receipt and check the full capacity at the earliest opportunity. Fill the drive so that no space remains check the number of files and folders.Remove the drive plug back in and re-check the number of files and folders to ensure they are all still there.

I had two supposed Kingston "16Gb" memory sticks but only the first Gb was “good” on each of them.

The error given when copying files to the drive was x8007 0570.

The drives were checked using H2testw which I obtained from :- http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/H2testw.shtml.
The error message I had was:-

Warning: Only 15995 of 15996 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
1005.3 MByte OK (2059008 sectors) … this is where I found out only 1Gb was “OK”. On the second drive it was 1002Mbyte OK . . .

Being of a suspicious nature my guess is that I had a fake drives and "they" hoped the receipt would be lost by the time it was discovered that the drives were “1Gb” as opposed to 16Gb drives.

I didn't have the receipt but I went back to the Vendor on Monday, had a wee chat and tested a replacement drive by copying some files and it looked OK.

The drives and files look OK while copying however it is after removing and reinserting the drive that one finds if the files have been retained or not by the drive. When I got home the music files had disappeared and there were three virus files on the memory stick free of charge. BEWARE!

The virus files were zapped by Bullguard my anti-virus package. I then formatted the drive and ran H2testW and again found the memory stick to be defective.

I went back to the Vendor on Tuesday and was given a Transcend 16Gb memory stick instead. My PC wrote to the Transcend 16Gb at 5.85Mb/s. On the two previous defective Kingston 16Gb memory sticks it was writing at 3.95Mb. A faster drive for PHP 200 extra.

I ran the full H2testW on the Transcend, while standing for about an hour at the Vendor's stall, and no defects were found.

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