Kingston (SNV125-S2) 128GB shows up as 4GB drive

[capcapara]

Any ideas, what might be tha cause of this? Controller, maybe one of the cips died?

Thanks!

[arvika]

Fake?

[drc]

Haven't seen any fake SSDs here, has anyone else?

[capcapara]

No, it's not fake. Worked flawlessly at 128GB for a long time, then in a sudden it became 4GB :O.

[pepe]

did u have more than 4GB of data while it was working?

pepe

[capcapara]

did u have more than 4GB of data while it was working?

pepe

Yeah, definetly.

[Zero Alpha]

How much did you pay for this. Heaps of fake SSD are on the market now

[craig6928]

i dont thing there any fake ssd cards out there

so it more likely faulty

[code_slave]

They are available in South China at the moment, I have found one of the bare board PCB producers, buried away on the 7th floor of another building they use "code words" to refer to the PCBs.

I was toying with the idea of posting a video of one of the 'centers' where this crap comes from, problem would be getting the video and making it out alive. , last time I was in there I tried to get some pictures of the test/rebranding Equipment using my mobile phone and the place came 'down on me'.
They had rows of girls with 'bunsen burners' actually removing and cleaning up the scrap flash chips.

The building is also a hotbed of fake-flash stick production, re-branding of fake chips and recycling Nand-Flash scrap as new product.

[craig6928]

wow that is a suprise as i never come across second party ssd cards yet.

they dont run any better then normal hard drives allso ssd cards fail a lot more



so they must get the scrap flash chips from the factory and then rebuild them and put them in well know brand names


thanks for the information code_slave

[code_slave]

It is far worse than getting scrap from a factory.

This crap has been through so many hands it makes a hooker look like mother Teresa.

The "reliable" companies buy in Nand-Flash chips, which they then screen as ultra reliable, anything outside of that they sell into the local market, basically they are "good" chips within the Silicon manufacturers spec. (What happens next is the problem)
These chips then get to a second factory and are screened again, and so on, until the absolute dregs end up in this "production area".

On top of that , the shear cost and volume of manufacturing these drives(nand-flash,SSd), usually precludes "repair", so this "scrap" is sold out in job lots to other factories , who can finance repairs working on the margins they work on.
This then continues.

The absolute DREGGS end up on Ebay, because a factory/ individual buys in the scrap and then uses one of the tools on the market to re-program the controller. (I have a couple of these "programmer kits" for evaluation , part of a forensic research project).
These kits allow programming of upto 16- 32 of the nand-flash controller "parameter" areas at a time.

I have posted a picture of a "4" way harness used to "test" chips , but actually it allows you to manipulate the Nand-Flash controller configuration area via the manufacturers utilities for the chips.

Attachments

[craig6928]

wow thanks for the information

it shows you that everyone needs to look out for things like this


cheers

[badssd]

SAME ISSUE. SSD WAS 128, NOW SHOWS UP AS 4GB?

My Solid State Drive (OCZ OCZSSD2-1C128G 128gb 2.5 inch SATA2 solid state disk (SSD) (mlc chip)) worked fine in my new macbook laptop since oct 2008. I had snow leopard loaded in a stock form and it was flawless. June 2010 I put my laptop to sleep by closing the lid as I always do. When I opened it the next day, it would not wake from sleep. I got the [?] blinking disk question mark icon. It would not boot.

I have 4 GB physical RAM since new. Since it would not wake, my SSD shows up not as 128GB but as 4GB only. No disk utility on any computer can correctly ID this drive now. I put a new hard drive in the Mac and it booted right up. Two people say my SSD just got fried. From what? Also why does it show as 4GB (the same size as my RAM)? Is there any since in paying someone to try to fix my SSD/recover data?

[harddrivespecialist]

I have seen it years ago, when Chinese made flash drive to appear as a large drive, but only had 512MB instead of 8GB.
Its very hard to check them in conventional way.

[ppumkin]

I remember going to Honk Kong and i met bloke that sat inside of a container on a local marker, he was reprogramming CPU chips (intel celerons) making them look like dual cores or Exxx Type processors. They showed up in bios like this. Windows reported it it like this. Obviously doing benchmarks you could see the truth on graphs--

This recycling of Nand seems quite interesting

It is absolutely difficult to buy some decent stuff from China and those regions..

[code_slave]

What many people overlook is that they don't actually manufacture a given silicon product, they actually aim to make the best quality of the highest product in the range, all the other products are actually the defective parts of the 'best' part.

so in the case of CPU, they are actually jumper options to configure /lock out the defective functions, same with FPGA's, and obviously Nand-Flash chips, i'm supposed to be in HK on the 7th Nov onwards and will be passing thru Shenzhen so i may try and get some video.

One funny 'wheeze' at the moment in Shenzhen China are laptop computers for 20-70US /sony visio etc , and Iphone4.

Actually they are just cases with an lcd and a simple cpu to display what should appear on the lcd, as the phone/ computer is booted, very very funny watching the greedy people being ripped off.

[ppumkin]

Its not funny being ripped off ; especially if something is advertised as original.

Its called lying and fraud. Do they really find it funny that most of the world thinks that way of Chinese people? Lier's and fraudsters? Almost the same level as Nigerians. I would not want to be associated in that way.

That is a bit pathetic.

[code_slave]

Well thats the way the world is i'm afraid, especially in parts of Shenzhen, mind you just take a look at the banks and politicians in the U.K to see that it has very little or nothing to do with being "chinese", and more to do with greed.

[ppumkin]

Hmmm.... You make a good point..

[afrin]

Well not all chips are from a good wafer, only the important ones so a garbage collection routine could of found a bad block and start marking shrinking the SSD and even if not at the moment used to mark ( by error or because the chips are gone bad ) the whole thing but one 4 gb chip ( that has the important stuff on it )
SSD's are nasty