Hdd/ thumb drive false capacity hack?

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fkg
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Hdd/ thumb drive false capacity hack?

Post by fkg » Fri Apr 30, 2010 3:33 pm

Hello this is something i was wanting to learn so i can better understand it, the question is how do I hack my hdd or usb thumb drive to make it think it is larger than it is?. I was a recipient of a no name brand thumb drive and had a feeling it was to good to be true for what i paid, so i decided to dig a little bit and sure enough it read when looking at it as 20gb when in actuality it was only 2gb. I want to clear up any miss conceptions about my motives behind wanting to know this kind of info, i am a respectable father and engineering grad i just gotta know how this is done; i don't like it when somebody knows something i don't especially something I want to understand. thanks mates!

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Cool_Fire
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Re: Hdd/ thumb drive false capacity hack?

Post by Cool_Fire » Wed May 12, 2010 8:20 pm

I don't know about making drives seem larger then they really are. I do know it happens the other way around, since it's just cheaper to produce a lot of the same drives and limit some to sell them as smaller drives. In most cases you can use some (pretty advanced) tools to use this space anyway.

I suppose in theory it could be possible to do it the other way around too.

But really, if they sold you a 2Gb drive as a 20Gb drive, you should go and get your money back for it.

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stasik
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Re: Hdd/ thumb drive false capacity hack?

Post by stasik » Wed Mar 23, 2011 11:02 am

chinese usb flashes sometimes state they have 8 gb. and if u insert into pc and look at properties, u ll see 8 gb. but they use some kind of looping mechanism to fool the pc. the only way to find the real size, is to copy data on it until it is full. maybe chinese entrepreneurs could give u more info on it)

psilocybin
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Re: Hdd/ thumb drive false capacity hack?

Post by psilocybin » Wed Mar 23, 2011 9:38 pm

wow this is an old thread, but since it's been dragged up I'll go ahead and answer the question. a USB drive contains 2 major components: the storage medium (for a flash drive, eeprom), and the controller. the controller interfaces to the storage medium, and handles the protocol implementation for USB. depending on the controller, there may be an external transceiver/line driver for the actual line signalling for the USB, but these days that is all usually included in the controller chip. this is all sort of tangential, but hopefully it will help you understand the next part easier to know that a thumb drive isn't just a dumb, passive device, but that it actually has a tiny little computer in it. to answer your question, USB is a communication protocol, just like TCP/IP, and as soon as you plug a thumb drive into your computer it identifies itself to the computer, like whatever type of device it is so the operating system can load up the appropriate drivers.it could also tell the computer other things, like its name, its speed, and yes, its storage capacity. so what it sounds like is the engineers that designed your thumb drive programmed it to lie about its storage capacity to the computer.

meh I'm sure the OP will never read this :sad:

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