About VID PID Repairing Counterfeit Flash Drives – Steps To Succeed

FixFakeFlash from SOSFakeFlash, explains steps to rescue a fake flash (counterfeit) drive. How you can try to return it to its true size. Wrestling with FrankenFlash drives to make them useful is a mystery to most victims of fake flash drive purchases. The information FixFakeFlash has for you comes from the efforts of fake flash victims who succeeded in repairing their drives.

Before you begin, please read: Should You Repair A Fake USB Flash (Pen) Drive? from TechChips. Update September 23th, 2009.

Important Update on Chipgenius 20101207,  please read:

Chip Genius – The Good And The Bad About This Software In Identify Flash Memory Chips And Repairing Fake Hacked Memory. How Useful Is Chipgenius?

Important Update on repairing flash memory cards to original capacity from TechChips  20110713.

Fixing Fake SD SDHC Cards, Is It Possible? What Are The Problems And Challenges? What Software To Use To Test For Flash Memory Fake Chips. Is There A Free Download To Check Flash Drives And Memory Cards Size?

To repair counterfeit (fake) flash drives you need the VID and the PID for a flash drive. This will help you determine the software tool required to perform a low level reformatting (commonly known as reflashing). Reformatting in an operating system is “high level” and can not repair the drive. The controller on the flash drive has been reprogrammed to lie – this is why you normally need a special software tool. They exist and are available, but you need to know which one you must use for your drive.

The VID is the Vendor information, the PID is the flash chip controller information. The PID is supposed to identify the chip set family for a software reprogramming tool. How to find this information? The easiest way is to download a program called chipgenius – it will read the drive for you. Only if chipgenius does not find any useful information or the information does not match anything known on the internet should you consider taking your USB flash drive apart. Some drives do not come apart easily so avoid this unless you have no other choice. In most cases you will not have to consider doing this.

Update 20091023: Please consult the new FAQ at FixFakeFlash Inspectortech for important information on repairing fake flash memory items before you attempt to repair.

Follow these steps to begin the journey to fix and repair your fake USB flash drive to its real size:

Step 1 – Identify your flash drive VID and PID.
Step 2 – Find the Right software tool
Step 3 – Trouble Shooting – Understanding about VID’s and PID’s for Fake flash drives
Step 4 – Preparing to reprogramme your fake
Step 5 – Share your solution

Please be sure to read this entire article before you attempt to repair your fake flash USB drive, do not take short cuts.

Step 1 – Identify your flash drives VID and PID.

Download chipgenius, this program will automatically detect an inserted flash drive and read out the 4 digit VID code and 4 digit PID code.

http://www.mydigit.cn/mytool/ChipGenius.rar

If you don’t have software that can unzip the “rar” format, please get the software 7-zip from:

http://www.7-zip.org/

Step 2 – Find the Right software tool

Once you have the VID and PID you can begin your search for a tool to fix your counterfeit flash drive and return it to its true size. In your journey to make your fake flash drive real, you need to be aware there is a risk of losing your drive if you use the wrong tool. It is a gamble. Many people win, restoring their flash drive, others loose. There is no 100% guarantee you will succeed. If you are stuck with a fake, there is no harm in trying. The Frankenflash drive is useless and dangerous to use, unless you can restore it to its true size.

You can search fixfakeflash.wordpress.com to see if there are any reported solutions that match for your VID, PID, vendor and product information – use the search box and the categories menu. You might be lucky – a solution already documented. You can also search SOSFakeflash.wordpress.com for information reported on VID AND PID, and the manufacturers.

SOSFakeFlash is the main site for discussion and sharing on ideas to fix fake USB flash drives at the moment. You may leave comments on the different solution posts at this site to share your repair experience.

Right now software tools are not available for download at our sites. Internet etiquette is to reference the sites that made them available in the first place. You should visit the site most of us use. We don’t advise using a site in the orient – the interfaces for the flashing programs frequently not in English; the risk of virus and or Trojan greater. Whatever site you download from – make sure never to open but instead to save the file to disk. Then run your virus scanner to examine the file you downloaded before unpacking or executing.

This is the site we use most – they have been busy building a collection and it grows all the time:

http://www.flashboot.ru/index.php?name=iflash

Translated to English (recommended)

If the file passes your virus scanning, you can now unpack the file. Continue to read the rest of this article before using the program.

Step 3 – Trouble Shooting – Understanding about VID’s and PID’s for Fake flash drives

The wrong VID and PID can cause an operating system not to recognize the flash drive as a USB device. It can also cause a computer to “Lock Up” – Freeze. In some cases the counterfeit reprogrammer is an armature and does not know how to use the tools properly. In other cases the fake flash reprogrammer switched to another batch of drives and forgot to reset the tool to the new VID and or PID. The software tool(s) will carry out the reprogramming of the drive but it will write the PID and VID as identified in the software tool he used. Because of this, you should research carefully based on the information provided by chipgenius. It is also why we want to do articles with VID and PID information to make it easier for you to succeed. As we have mentioned, if the wrong tool is used the drive will not be detected (good) or if manual selections are used the drive can be damaged (bad).

Even if the VID and PID are not exactly correct, if it is the same chip family (PID range) – it may still be possible to carry out the repair. Unfortunately when you do the repair the wrong VID and PID is carried over – not much of an issue as you only need to succeed in reflashing once.

In most cases the VID and PID for a fake flash drive is correct or good enough for your purposes.

If when using Chipgenius you didn’t find a match to hunt for the correct software to use, you still have an option – manually disassemble the drive if the model allows this. Do so with care. Locate the little black square chip on the drive – it is the flash chip controller. Read the beginning identification. For example:

AU6980
AU6983
MXT6208
MXT8208

If your drive is not glued to the bottom casing you can examine and record the flash drive chip too. This information is only useful after you find a tool you want to use. You can use the additional information of the existing chip to compare against what the tool identified your flash drive storage to be.

Step 4 – Preparing to reprogramme your fake

Make sure you wrote down the VID and PID information. You might want to compare it against what the tool reports in the manual setting. You might also like to revise the VID or PID to match what chipgenious reported if different from the tool (manual settings probably from the previous person who used the tool when they uploaded). It is very hard to say if you should revise the VID and PID if there is a difference. Our advice is to leave the settings alone, go “Auto”. If the results are bad, then redo the flashing with the settings chipgenious reported to see if there is an improvement. Inch your way to success.

If you took your drive apart and were able to identify the flash drive number (note this is not the little square controller chip we are talking about, but the flash chip where the data is stored), compare it against what the tool chose as the flash drive. If different still run the tool in “Auto”. If the results are bad, go back and select a manual mode, Look to find the flash drive chip listings. You might have to set a manual mode option to get the list activated. Scroll through the list to find your drive. If there, select it and run the tool again.

We strongly advise that you do not play with the many options available in some tools. It requires a lot of technical understanding. We are not technicians trained in flash drive chips – we don’t really know or understand the differences, so let the tool decide what to do with the defaults. After all, the object is only to return the drive to its real size and to lock out any bad sectors found. Bad sectors are not unusual – you will always have some. They exist on flash drives and hard drives. As most counterfeit flash drives are rejects for major brands do not be surprised to see the tool finding a lot of bad sectors. All that matters is that they are FOUND and locked out. If there are a lot of bad sectors expect the drive to shrink considerably much below what the real flash drive chip is supposed to hold in data. Again consider – better a little healthy drive then a large bad one you can not trust.

Do not play with any partitioning options and do not make the drive a local drive.

Run the tool with no other programs up and running. Let the tool have the full focus of your computer’s resources to get the job done.

Avoid rerunning a reflashing tool many times unless you have to. Tests we’ve carried out indicate that repeatedly rerunning a reflashing tool on a drive decreases its size. The reasons for this are not known. It is possible that flash chips do not like being “reburned”. Normally this is done once in a flash drive chip’s life – when it is being prepared at the factory. Flash chips are different in technology from hard drives. Only rerun a tool if you have to, not to practice or experiment.

Step 4 – Verifying the Results of Reflashing

Once the tool has completed, it should tell you the final size and also how many bad sectors found. You may or may not have to format the flash drive. It depends on the tool. If you need to format it, do so. If you are looking for ntfs formatting and don’t find it, there are reasons. Unless you need to store hugh video files (4GB+) there is no reason to do this. Flash drives as a rule are normally formatted as FAT and FAT32 by manufacturers. It is because this file system is the most compatible and understood by many different operating systems. The technology behind NTFS is very proprietary and specific to Microsoft Windows from Windows 2000 onward (XP, Vista).

See:

Reasons not to format a USB Flash Drive to the NTFS File System

http://www.tech-pro.net/ntfs-usb-flash-pen-drives.html

If you really want NTFS you can read

Tips for USB pen drives

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbstick_e.html

The information is for advanced computer users. If you aren’t comfortable with the information found at the site, don’t try out any of the ideas or information please. If you are comfortable still format to FAT or FAT32 like everybody else and of course do the test with H2testw 1.4 to prove you succeeded. You can always do your dare devil experiments to have NTFS formatting later.

Once you have reflashed the drive, don’t begin to use it to store data. You must TEST your efforts first to make sure you succeeded. This is important. You need to know the drive is now good and safe to use. Use the H2testw 1.4 programme. If you don’t have it please read:

H2testw 1.4 – Gold Standard In Detecting USB Counterfeit Drives

http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/h2testw-14-gold-standard-in-detecting-usb-counterfeit-drives/

and download the software from the links provided.

If the program reports you have a good drive free of any errors, you have succeeded in restoring your FrankenFlash drive to a real flash drive.

Step 5 – Share your solution

If you used this article to help you succeed in returning your drive to its true size or a usable size, please document how you did it for your drive model. Share your solution to help others succeed too.

Repairing Counterfeit Flash Drives is a complex subject. No one magic solution exists to fix all drives. There are many flash drive models and chipsets. It grows every month. We’ve written this article to demonstrate the common principals and steps a person has to follow to succeed in making a fake flash drive real again.

Help your fellow fake flash victims – send your solution to:

SOSFakeFlashDrive@gmail.com

We need to know:

1) Chipset (i.e. AU6983, MXT6208 etc..
2) Vender (Alcor,AMECO,micov,iCreate)
3) VID
4) PID
5) Tool Used (name and url address to it if possible)

Optional

6) Where you bought the fake from (the store, internet site, eBay)
7) If eBay the seller id and the item number and your id (so we can try and find the listing) and present with an image if the drive if possible
8) The advertised size
9) Your repaired restored size
10) You steps, comments or anything else you would like to add

If you like you can choose a pen name, a nom de plume for yourself. It is fun and it is interesting too! All the information found at our sites comes from people sharing. Help others to climb out of the fake flash pit and at least get a flash drive they can use.