> They program the drive to read 1TB but rewrite the 1GB over and over. My understanding is that they didn't specifically write a "program" to do it, all they

> They program the drive to read 1TB but rewrite the 1GB over and over. My understanding is that they didn't specifically write a "program" to do it, all they did was to "program" a bunch of false configuration data to the USB flash controller and let it silently corrupt the flash. If you can find their internal programming tools on the web, they can even be fixed by program the correct configuration back. >Worst thing is you never know until you need the data you wrote... It's worthwhile to run dd+sha256sum or badblocks(8) on suspicious USB drives.