Partitioning mystery.....what on EARTH is going on?

[mikewalsh]

Afternoon, gang.

Well, I've got a mystery on my hands, guys.

I took delivery of a brand-new PNY 'nano'-sized USB 3.1 512 GB flash drive this morning. I want to use it to free-up a spare USB port on the Latitude laptop. It's got 4 ports; one occupied by a webcam; one has a 3-way hub with mouse'n'keyboard dongles and my USB headphones; and the remaining two have a pair of 256 GB SanDisk Ultra 'Fit' USB 3.2 'nano'-sized flash drives.....which gives me a half-terabyte of 'permanent' external storage ('cos they never get removed).

It's the same stunt I pulled with the old Inspiron lappie.....it works very well for what I want.

By combining the contents of the two smaller drives onto one bigger drive, it'll give me one permanent spare port for anything else I may need. Now; here's where it gets odd.

This drive will format to FAT32 in around 3 minutes. But I don't want FAT32; I want ext3, 'cos I need a Linux file-system for various reasons. ATM, it's got gParted running to format it as a single ext3 partition.......and it's been running for 4 1/2 hours, and is STILL nowhere near finished.

Might this be due to using msdos instead of GPT? I can't see it should make any difference; the 1 TB Crucial MX500 SSD I installed a couple of years ago has one 500GB partition on it, formatted ext3 with msdos partition table, and that only took a matter of minutes. Even the smaller SanDisk USB 3.2 drives only took around 5 minutes.....

The crazy thing is, if I cancel, and go back and re-format to FAT32 again, it'll be done in 3 minutes once more!!

To my way of thinking, there's summat not kosher here. I've never heard of a flash drive that will ONLY format to FAT32. Or am I missing something?

What do y'all reckon?

Mike.

[rockedge]

Strange indeed. What happens with ext4?

[mikewalsh]

Strange indeed. What happens with ext4?

@rockedge :-

No idea, Erik. I'm loathe to try, 'cos if it follows the same pattern as this one, it could be running overnight and STILL not be done. What would YOU do?

This could be a 'dodgy' drive.....and I could be nearly £50 down. Bugger!

The trouble is, with the way flash drives are packaged, you HAVE to cut the packaging to get it out. You don't know if it's 'dodgy' until you physically plug it in and try using it. And once you've 'damaged' the packaging, Amazon won't accept it as a return.....because they then can't re-sell it!

Mike.

[wizard]

@mikewalsh

PNY 'nano'-sized USB 3.1 512 GB flash drive

About a year ago I bought 6, 16gb PNY USB 2.0 drives from Amazon. Wanted a couple to use for USB boot testing and the rest for Puppy LInux give a ways. Same issue as yours, but on a smaller scale. You would go to sleep waiting for them to format ext3. Did read/write testing on them and they don't even make USB 1.0 speeds. Even Walmart's ONN USB drives are faster (still bad). I'm guessing your problem is PNY, I'd return the drive if possible and go for a Sandisk or other brand that gets good speed ratings.

I have 10 year old no name drives that run circles around the PNY's, Seems like flash drive quality has gotten worse with time. First thing I do now is speed test them right out of the box.

wizard

[mikewalsh]

@wizard :-

Yah, I'm thinking along the same lines, buddy. If you plug it in, then open gParted, it doesn't even show as a named specific drive.......just a 'generic' "USB DISK 3.0".

I went for one of these because the connector IS metal. With the SanDisks, the whole thing, connector as well, is plastic. I keep expecting them to break; this is something SanDisk have been doing with a number of their designs for years, ever since the original 'Blade' drives came out. I had several of those; good drives, cheap as chips, but the connectors would keep cracking along the edges of the connector end. Once that happened, its life-span was limited.

I think I should have gone for the 512 GB SanDisk drive instead. These, I KNOW they work.....and work well. I was trying to go for summat a bit more 'durable', that's all.

So; this is my first experience of a PNY drive. I shan't bother with 'em again, that's for sure. I'll stick with SanDisk; despite their construction 'issues', they're a far superior drive.

(grrrr.....)

Mike.

[wizard]

@mikewalsh

If they came from amazon and they won't let you return because you opened the package, I'd try escalating it, it's obvious you can''t try the product without cutting the package open. At the very least you should give them a bad review.

wizard

[williwaw]

And once you've 'damaged' the packaging, Amazon won't accept it as a return.....because they then can't re-sell it!

perhaps the return policy is not amazon but the seller listing on amazon?

more reputable sellers have better policies and better products

there are counterfeits and markets in the junk that that didnt pass QC and was "supposed" to have been binned

[greengeek]

I would suggest reformatting back to fat32 and running f3.

I have had a couple of drives recently that spoofed the size and behaved exactly as you described. Bought them as 256GB but turned out to be 4GB.

Shame because they were sturdy metal case construction and looked quality. Not name brand tho' so I got what I paid for...

[bigpup]

Have you tried to make a new partition table and then partition and format?

I would still make it a msdos partition table setup.

There is the USB drive scam, of taking a lower memory amount drive, and hacking it to appear to be much larger.

I have had good luck with PNY USB drives.

They were all packaged in an official looking PNY sealed package.

Was yours?

I assume you are trying to make only one partition on the drive.

After making a new partition table.

Try making a small ,say 50GB partition and formatting it ext3.
How does that seem to work?

What version of Gparted are you using?

[mikewalsh]

I've solved the issue, guys. I've binned the damn thing.

I formatted it back to FAT 32, and tried transferring some files. SLOW is not the word; a snail could beat this thing even with a half-hour's head start. Definitely crap.

I don't mind doing this for one simple reason. I bought this with an Amazon gift card I got for Xmas, so it didn't in fact cost me a penny.

Before I did so, I pulled it apart, just out of curiosity. Huh. The circuit board was all but bare.......just a tiny wee chip - microscopic, actually! - in one corner (and nothing else). Most definitely a scam....and obviously with a messed-about controller chip. Which is what I think that tiny chip was.....just a "controller", and nowt else.

I've left a warning on the product page on Amazon.......which is full of what look like AI-generated reviews praising it up. Yeah, riiiight.....

I'll get the SanDisk that I should have bought in the first place.....and which is almost 40% cheaper into the bargain. Oh, SanDisk have produced some dogs in their time, but their biggest and most well-known cock-up - the Cruzer 'Blades' that kept going read-only - was traced back to a shipment of dodgy controllers from Hynix. Who they ended up taking to court in a case that lasted almost 8 years before an out-of-court settlement was eventually reached.

I've never had any real complaints with SanDisk. By & large, their stuff just works.....and works really well. That's my experience, anyway.

========================

@bigpup :- Believe me, I tried everything I could think of, and THEN some. NOTHING worked. Packaging was the official, proper packaging - fully sealed, as it should be. And I was using Fossapup64's gParted, which has always worked for me.

It's moot, anyway. Turned out there was nothing inside it.....no NAND flash at all!

Mike.

[bigpup]

I do not know exactly what PNY USB drive you have.

But on the PNY web site support FAQ.

It has this about one of it's USB drives.

Can I partition the Attaché USB drive?
No, PNY does not currently support partitioning of the Attaché USB drive.

But I have never had a USB drive, I could not make a new partition table, and partition/format any way I wanted to.

[mikewalsh]

@bigpup :-

This one:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/PNY-512GB-Elit ... r=8-2&th=1

But, as I said, it was a moot point anyway.....because there WAS no NAND flash inside it!

Mike.

[bigpup]

We must have posted around the same time.

I did not see your post before I posted.

You for sure need to contact Amazon customer service.
Tell them what you found.

Keep the drive so they can have it if they want.

For something like this, they should give you a replacement drive.

[mikewalsh]

@bigpup :-

Oh, it's not necessarily a scammer at work. It could just as easily have been what we over this side of the "the Pond" refer to as a 'Friday afternoon job', when everybody's impatiently waiting for knocking-off time......and QC just goes out the window!

(shrug....)

I'm not too worried!

Mike.

[TerryH]

@bigpup :-

This one:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/PNY-512GB-Elit ... r=8-2&th=1

But, as I said, it was a moot point anyway.....because there WAS no NAND flash inside it!

Mike.

What a buggar, the amazon listing looked good and at 200 MB/s should have been a great buy.

[bigpup]

I am wondering what this micro drive looks like, after you got the cover off it.

As little space there is for stuff.

I am wondering if the actual memory chip, is under or in the plastic strip, that is housing the connection pins, in the USB plug part.