A question about my USB

[Bangkok Barry]

I've recently acquired a 2TB USB after seeing an ad on Facebook. Such a source raises at least a yellow flag, but the presentation/website was perfect and there were even contact details including someone's email address. Could buy with PayPal so all seemed secure. And was. Cost me $45 with buy 1, get 1 free and including $10 postage from China (any returns go to the USA). I have read that sometimes these sized disks aren't actually 2TB and can even fool your computer that they are, but all seems well. I've loaded big files and the space left has coincided. The only problem I have is this:

Although it plays back videos on my (brand new) laptop the USB is not recognised by either my several years old DVD blu-ray machine or my rather ancient tv. Maybe both are too old to handle such a big capacity disk, although a 1.5TB SSD works fine. There are smart people out there among you who will recognise the problem and know how it might be fixed. It's not a big deal as I can use the USB simply for storage, but if there's a solution I'd like to apply it.

[stouricks]

It could be the way the USB is formatted. NTFS is usually OK, but if it doesn't work, try the old format FAT32. Don't put anything important on the drives until you sort it.

[Bangkok Barry]

7 minutes ago, stouricks said:

It could be the way the USB is formatted. NTFS is usually OK, but if it doesn't work, try the old format FAT32. Don't put anything important on the drives until you sort it.

It says exFAT. I could change that (I'll have to look up again how to do that as I've had to do it on other USBs to play or copy large files). I'll not be putting anything on for now as I have a couple of SSDs, I just bought it now as spare as the price was good.

[steverwales]

What is the actual size of the files you have loaded. There is a scam where the controller in the usb device is fooled to say its 2TB on a windows device... could be what's happened.. try to load a few large files onto it, see when it gets full

[stouricks]

26 minutes ago, Bangkok Barry said:

It says exFAT. I could change that (I'll have to look up again how to do that as I've had to do it on other USBs to play or copy large files). I'll not be putting anything on for now as I have a couple of SSDs, I just bought it now as spare as the price was good.

You get what you pay, or do not , pay for.

[OneMoreFarang]

52 minutes ago, Bangkok Barry said:

I've recently acquired a 2TB USB after seeing an ad on Facebook. Such a source raises at least a yellow flag, but the presentation/website was perfect and there were even contact details including someone's email address.

I hope you get this sorted and I agree with above that the format of the file system could be likely the problem.

 

Apart from that I wonder why you, and probably many others, try to buy something like this cheap.

A 2TB disk contains a lot of data, i.e. videos, pictures, whatever. Even if you get that data for free by i.e. downloading movies from the internet it will take a long time to fill up the drive. Personally I would want to have a good feeling about the security of my data because it would take a LOONG time to get the data back if I would lose it.

For that reason I would never buy a cheap disk or other device just because it's cheap. 

Let's imagine your 45$ investment would suddenly stop working after you filled it up. Would you then think about if maybe you should have spend 70$ or 100$ in a quality part with known source?

 

My idea here is not to criticize you but to make you think twice before you buy cheap the next time.

 

[stouricks]

32 minutes ago, Bangkok Barry said:

It says exFAT. I could change that (I'll have to look up again how to do that as I've had to do it on other USBs to play or copy large files). I'll not be putting anything on for now as I have a couple of SSDs, I just bought it now as spare as the price was good.

You bought a 2TB (sorry 2 x 2TB) HARD drives for $45 and expect them to work.

For that money you could have gone to invadeIt, or even Lazada and got an SSD that would work.

Why do you need so much storage space?

 

One More got in before me.

[OneMoreFarang]

7 minutes ago, Stadtler said:

Stadtler just spat a chocolate milkshake all over his white sofa due to the laughing and chortling that Stadtler could not stifle.  This should have been your first clue!

 

CHINA!

Lots of computer parts are build in China. Same like some expensive mobile phone with an American brand name.

[OneMoreFarang]

5 minutes ago, stouricks said:

You get what you pay, or do not , pay for.

At the beginning all disks are not formatted. It cost the same to format them in whatever format you want. Nothing.

 

format /?
/FS:filesystem  Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, UDF, ReFS).

[Lacessit]

15 minutes ago, Stadtler said:

Stadtler just spat a chocolate milkshake all over his white sofa due to the laughing and chortling that Stadtler could not stifle.  This should have been your first clue!

 

CHINA!

Just as well Stadtler has given up on wearing face masks.

[giddyup]

37 minutes ago, Bangkok Barry said:

It says exFAT. I could change that (I'll have to look up again how to do that as I've had to do it on other USBs to play or copy large files). I'll not be putting anything on for now as I have a couple of SSDs, I just bought it now as spare as the price was good.

I had the same problem recently with my USB's not playing on a 10 year old Panasonic Home Theatre. I reformatted (just click on the USB when inserted into a PC) to Fat32 and the USB's worked fine. Just make sure the USB is empty before you do, otherwise you'll lose everything stored.

[Stadtler]

24 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Lots of computer parts are build in China. Same like some expensive mobile phone with an American brand name.

Not for long.

[Eindhoven]

So much chatting and no solution nor conclusion.

 

See here: https://h2testw.en.lo4d.com/windows will tell you all you need to know about the drive.

 

 

[Eindhoven]

Other options;

 

https://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/-fake-usb-flash-memory-drives can run a quicker test

 

or

 

https://www.usbdev.ru/files/chipgenius/ which gives you extended info about the drive.

 

 

[rvaviator]

36 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Lots of computer parts are build in China. Same like some expensive mobile phone with an American brand name.

Which is also made in China ... ???? .... but designed in America.

 

I can not remember how many old ThinkPads I have rebuild or fixed with parts bought from China. Never had an issue ..

[Rimmer]

A couple of off topic posts removed

[OneMoreFarang]

4 minutes ago, rvaviator said:

Which is also made in China ... ???? .... but designed in America.

 

I can not remember how many old ThinkPads I have rebuild or fixed with parts bought from China. Never had an issue ..

And my 10 year old Lenovo ThinkPad also still works fine. ????

[Andrew Dwyer]

I read that the only 2tb flash drive available is a Kingston, it is a chunky little thing probably twice the thickness of a regular flash drive.

Retails for $1100/$1200 USD , so 2 for $45 should ring some alarm bells !!

 

Plenty for sale on the usual online shopping sites and FB etc etc .

They do indeed trick the computer into thinking that they are 2tb ( or slightly less ) .

 

Loading files onto them reacts normally at first until they start to overwrite files and corruption of said files occurs.

 

Plenty of YouTube videos warning people of this scam.

 

NOTE: apparently this scam also happens on flash drives with a lower capacity ( 128gb and 256gb also common).

 

The giveaway should be the price, don’t go by the false reviews on these shopping sites !!

[NanLaew]

Beware of buying USB memory and also beware of external storage HD's. Back in March, I agreed to purchase an almost new 1Tb Seagate Slim Backup Plus external HD from a guy on a local forum. He had bought it only a few weeks earlier in a local store but had issues getting it working on his Apple system so was selling for 1000 baht, a bit cheaper than he paid for it. It was all in it's original packaging, with hologram seals on the box and the manual and on getting it home, I unboxed it and left it on the tailgate of the truck in the sun for half an hour to kill any bugs (this was back when Covid-19 was just kicking off). Later, when I tried to plug in the USB3 connector, the socket pushed way back inside the case and I thought maybe that was the guy's issue, a broken connector. I had a quick google for a how-to video on YouTube then proceeded to open it up which went really easy. Inside was a single USB thumb-drive stick (no encapsulation) held in place with double-sided adhesive tape, inserted in a regular female USB socket with some fly-leads to the female USB3 case connector that had been hot-glued into the case. The sun had softened the hot glue! There was also a square of metal affixed inside the case with double-sided adhesive tape that gave it the weight and heft of a regular HD. On connecting up, Windows mounted it as slightly less than 1Tb storage but I didn't do any file transfers to see if it really was. It was definitely not USB3 and after a quick look online, I noted if I really wanted a 1Tb thumb drive, they were still cheaper than 1000 baht.

 

I chatted with the guy on LINE, showed him the pics I had taken and he agreed to meet up and give me my money back for the HD. He had bought it from a shop in the local IT mall and we were both surprised that he had been ripped off. Online purchases on lazada and shopee are fraught with dangers but we didn't think a retailer would do that. Since the mall was closed back then, I don't know if he ever went back and and sorted it out.

 

Caveat emptor.

[phetphet]

Also be careful that some of these cheap drives can come with malware installed on them.

[Bangkok Barry]

3 hours ago, stouricks said:

 

I'm doing a test as recommended by Eindhoven (post #13)

[Bangkok Barry]

11 hours ago, Bangkok Barry said:

I'm doing a test as recommended by Eindhoven (post #13)

Which I abandoned as it said it would take 77 hours.

[Andrew Dwyer]

1 hour ago, Bangkok Barry said:

Which I abandoned as it said it would take 77 hours.

Yup, i had read that !!

 

If you have a large file ( a movie for example ) make several copies , keep the original, and load the others onto the flash drive.

After you have loaded 8 or 10 gb check the first video in the list to see if it plays or is corrupted, if okay continue adding more.

 

I had a similar experience buying some 128 gb flash drives, they would load 8gb but then it all went t1ts up !!

 

 Understood that they were 8gb flash altered to react as 128 gb, so instead of saying “ flash drive full “ when reaching 8 gb they started to overwrite and corrupted every file.

 

I am 99% certain that your 2 x 2tb flash drives for $45 are not genuine .

[Bangkok Barry]

15 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

A 2TB disk contains a lot of data, i.e. videos, pictures, whatever. Even if you get that data for free by i.e. downloading movies from the internet it will take a long time to fill up the drive. Personally I would want to have a good feeling about the security of my data because it would take a LOONG time to get the data back if I would lose it.

For that reason I would never buy a cheap disk or other device just because it's cheap. 

Let's imagine your 45$ investment would suddenly stop working after you filled it up. Would you then think about if maybe you should have spend 70$ or 100$ in a quality part with known source?

I'm with you on this. I bought to use as a second backup. I already use a 256GB permanently in my laptop as backup, and I store mostly tv series and movies on a 1TB and a 1.5. Not sure why really, as it's easy to 'acquire' most if not everything via the internet. So I'm told ????

 

For that price I thought it would be at least worth a try and, as you say, it would take a lot of stuff to fill it. I'll probably end up just keeping a few hundred GB on it and that way nothing would get overwritten.

[Bangkok Barry]

9 minutes ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Yup, i had read that !!

 

If you have a large file ( a movie for example ) make several copies , keep the original, and load the others onto the flash drive.

After you have loaded 8 or 10 gb check the first video in the list to see if it plays or is corrupted, if okay continue adding more.

 

I had a similar experience buying some 128 gb flash drives, they would load 8gb but then it all went t1ts up !!

 

 Understood that they were 8gb flash altered to react as 128 gb, so instead of saying “ flash drive full “ when reaching 8 gb they started to overwrite and corrupted every file.

 

I am 99% certain that your 2 x 2tb flash drives for $45 are not genuine .

Thanks. I'm probably not even going to bother. See my post #24 immediately above this.

[owl sees all]

A USB problem, but not the same one as in the OP.

 

Since purchasing my acer ASPIRE I have been unable to open one particular flash drive. 

 

When I insert it, there is flashing on the USB, and just for a second its contents arrive on the screen. Then it disappears and that's it.

 

Any ideas?

[Bangkok Barry]

Related to my original post, the advice I received to reformat did the trick. I changed it from exFAT to NTFS and it is now recognised by my dvd player.

 

As to its probable, rather than claimed, capacity, I'll not try filling it but probably just load it with a tv series or two at a time to watch from it. I've got a couple of (probably) decent-sized USBs for $45 and I'm okay with that.

 

[Bangkok Barry]

16 hours ago, stouricks said:

It could be the way the USB is formatted. NTFS is usually OK, but if it doesn't work, try the old format FAT32. Don't put anything important on the drives until you sort it.

NTFS works. Thanks.

[OneMoreFarang]

4 hours ago, Bangkok Barry said:

Related to my original post, the advice I received to reformat did the trick. I changed it from exFAT to NTFS and it is now recognised by my dvd player.

 

As to its probable, rather than claimed, capacity, I'll not try filling it but probably just load it with a tv series or two at a time to watch from it. I've got a couple of (probably) decent-sized USBs for $45 and I'm okay with that.

 

I never read about disks which pretend to have more capacity. But I know about USB sticks.

With the USB sticks "everything" works with just new added files. The problem on the wrong size sticks is that if they claim to have i.e. 200GB but they have only 100GB then the first 100GB are overwritten when more than 100GB is added. Such an error is not obvious because all the new files work...

[Bruce Aussie Chiang Mai]

You been scammed not what they said. Surprised you got at all.

Facebook full of scams. Just use Lazada or kiss your money goodbye to Chinese scammers.

Examples lately generators  $89 scams everywhere.

Typical Chinese.