Checking Memory stick!

iamasuperman

I bought a Memory stick [Sony Duo Pro] from eBay

For me it doesn't look original.......is there anyway to check it?

espresso

iamasuperman wrote: »

I bought a Memory stick [Sony Duo Pro] from eBay

For me it doesn't look original.......is there anyway to check it?

Fake memory is so rife on eBay that they even have a page about it here.

Why do people buy memory from eBay! It's been publicised well enough.

fwor

Apparently there are a lot of fakes on Ebay which are made with smaller memory chips and then formatted to seem larger than they really are.

If you take a look at the posts in this thread:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=666303

You'll find a pointer to HP's memory stick formatting tool. If you use this it should tell you what size it really is. Be aware that you will of course lose any data on it when you run the formatter!

iamasuperman

espresso wrote: »

Fake memory is so rife on eBay that they even have a page about it here.

Why do people buy memory from eBay! It's been publicised well enough.

Thanks for your reply.
I got it from ***** who has 99.9% and has 15377 positive feedbacks! [just when through the link you quoted] The memory card has 1.89GB capacity.

The only thing is it didn't come with original pack [only the stick+adapter]
so I couldnt check UPC / EAN Part Numbers etc

Not sure to keep this /return?

isofa

You could use the excellent PC Wizard to analyse the stick as a drive once it's plugged in, it should give the manufacturer, serial number etc there.

iamasuperman

isofa wrote: »

You could use the excellent PC Wizard to analyse the stick as a drive once it's plugged in, it should give the manufacturer, serial number etc there.

I get this message on PC Wizard 2008..........What does it mean???

General Information :
Disk Type : Removable Drive
Peripheral Type : USB
Manufacturer : TEAC
Model : USB HS-MS Card
Free Space : 100%
Drive Information :
Volume Name : Unspecified
Serial Number : 68C6-BE00
Files Name : 255
File Management : FAT
Volume is Compressed : No
Case Sensitive Search : No
Preserves Filename Case : Yes
Unicode Filenames : Yes
Access Control List : No
Named Streams : No
Object Identifiers : No
Reparse Points : No
Sparse Files : No
User Disk Quotas : No
Individual File Compression : No
Encryption : No
Share : No
Logical Features :
Sectors per Cluster : 64
Bytes per Sector : 512
Cluster size : 32 KB
Free Clusters : 62071
Total Clusters : 62071
Physical Features :
Cylinders : 247
Heads : 255
Sectors per Track : 63
Bytes per Sector : 512

fwor

If you calculate the capacity as 512*63*255*247/1024/1024 it gives a total of 1937MB, which identifies it as a fake, according to the Ebay link that espresso points to in post#2 above. It also suggests that Sony mainly use Samsung memory, so the reference to Teac looks suspect.

Does the printing on it match the images that are given as geniune (especially the "italic" s)?

John_Gray

fwor wrote: »

If you calculate the capacity as 512*63*255*247/1024/1024 it gives a total of 1937MB, which identifies it as a fake...

You missed the fact that the USB Flash Drive was formatted with the FAT(-16) file system, where the maximum partition size is 2 GB...

Suggest the OP tries formatting it as FAT-32...

fwor

Thanks John - I hadn't actually registered that FAT16 could have problems above 2GB! Are you certain about this? I've got a 4GB pendrive here that GPARTED reports as being formatted with FAT16, and it can see all of it without any apparent problem...

Anway, I ~think~ the OP was expecting the size to be 2GB, though he hasn't said explicitly.

I was just pointing out that the "geometry" of chip looks suspiciously like that of the fakes as described in the link above - the genuine ones appear to be slightly smaller.

iamasuperman

fwor wrote: »

If you calculate the capacity as 512*63*255*247/1024/1024 it gives a total of 1937MB, which identifies it as a fake, according to the Ebay link that espresso points to in post#2 above. It also suggests that Sony mainly use Samsung memory, so the reference to Teac looks suspect.

Does the printing on it match the images that are given as geniune (especially the "italic" s)?

Yes...........S in italics!

Also I checked Sony Original stick[came with Cybershot camera] which is identified as similar manufacturer ''TEAC''

Does it mean all I have is fake OR
I got too much worried about it?

John_Gray

The only way you can get 4 GB partitions formatted with FAT-16 is to have 64 kB "allocation units", which is rather unusual, and wasn't properly supported in the olden days...

Wikipedia has a fairly impenetrable table, and there's something much more straightforward here.

I had blithely assumed that the OP had a much larger Flash Drive, but was only seeing 2 GB of it!