[kwlug-disc] Buying online

[Kyle Spaans]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 5:31 PM, Rick <rickm at golden.net> wrote:
> Ah, but first one has to be aware that such devices _can_ be hacked.
> ...
> Second, I had no idea that USB flash drives even had firmware that could
> be overwritten. Indeed, when I tried to fill up the 16GB, I thought that
> the file corruption was due to some old Linux driver.

Indeed, I had no idea either until a guy I know  started talking about
how he had to
grudgingly find someone running Windows so that he can try out this Windows-Only
program that he found that would re-flash the USB drive's firmware. To which I
asked "I didn't know they could do that?" And he explained that, in
Linux he noticed
that as soon as he starting writing files once the drive was past the
2GB mark, the
only thing he could get back out of them were strings of binary zeros
(not ASCII zeros), even though he was perfectly able to create and
write to files past
that mark.

I wonder if your USB drive acts the same way? Is that what kind of
corruption you were
getting? (Do you still have the drive?)