[kwlug-disc] Buying online

[Rick]

"Kyle Spaans" <3lucid at gmail.com> writes:
> I wonder if your USB drive acts the same way? Is that what kind of
> corruption you were getting?

I get subdirectories with lots of "????" once I go past 2GB.
Is a totally corrupt file system and I get "Input/Output errors".

Not sure what's happening with individual reads. I guess I need to run
some tests. Not sure how to directly access memory locations on a drive
... if you know, I'll try your instructions.

Anyway, these are the generate files after I ran a program test:

    $ ls
    1.h2w	11.h2w	13.h2w	15.h2w	2.h2w  4.h2w  6.h2w  8.h2w
    10.h2w	12.h2w	14.h2w	16.h2w	3.h2w  5.h2w  7.h2w  9.h2w
    $ ls -lh
    total 16G
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 user root 1.0G 2008-12-10 21:06 1.h2w
    ...
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 user root 1.0G 2008-12-10 21:18 9.h2w

And, no, the reads are aren't just returning zeros:

    $ od -j 8888888 -N 32 9.h2w
    41721070 115417 000037 115420 000037 115421 000037 115422 000037
    41721110 115423 000037 115424 000037 115425 000037 115426 000037
    $ od -j 555555 -N 32 13.h2w
    2075043 005000 017633 005400 017633 006000 017633 006400 017633
    2075063 007000 017633 007400 017633 010000 017633 010400 017633

Maybe I'll try "od" on the "/dev/sdX" ... but I'll ignore things for now
and do extra research later. Just now I'm getting swamped with Christmas
stuff.

> (Do you still have the drive?)

Ha, that con-artist isn't getting back the pendrive unless I get sent
postage and handling. And, of course, that's not happening. There is
no "supplier" who will give refunds for "defective items". The faker
will just try to sell the item to yet another victim, assuming I wasted
money on postage to send it back.

There are eBay review pages done by other ripped off customers. And
those pages not this is fraud ... _not_ defective items under
warranty. As you said, some searching pulls up plenty of tips ...
including on how to deal with the con-artist _after_ one gets
suckered. But, damn, this con-artist has stolen from so many others,
and eBay/PayPal isn't going to a damn thing about it. I'm an irritation
to that crook ... and maybe just another part of the joke. At least
there are no more ongoing sales.

So, I do have a valid 2GB flash drive ... for free, minus my detective
work.  And, as other webpages say, fdisk will carve off a safe 1.9G or
so at the start. Or, if I get really ambitious, I can try to flash the
firmware.