Hi

Well i tried that fat16 bootsector and it didnt work. So i opened the drive as logical drive in hex workshop and sequencially started numbering the sectors starting at the sector just beyond the bootsector at offset 0x1F0 from "Sector1" - "Sector17" and then i modified my test bootsector to scan every CHS combination for the "Sector" signature at offset 0x1F0 and heres a small list of what i found.....

CODE

Sector #
At 0x1F0 |  H  |  C  |  S  |
----------------------------
    1    |  1  |  0  |  3D |
    2    |  1  |  0  |  3E |
    3    |  1  |  0  |  3F |
----------------------------
    1    |  2  |  0  |  39 |
    2    |  2  |  0  |  3A |
    3    |  2  |  0  |  3B |
    4    |  2  |  0  |  3C |
    5    |  2  |  0  |  3D |
    6    |  2  |  0  |  3E |
    7    |  2  |  0  |  3F |
----------------------------
    1    |  3  |  0  |  35 |
    2    |  3  |  0  |  36 |
    3    |  3  |  0  |  37 |
    4    |  3  |  0  |  38 |
    5    |  3  |  0  |  39 |
    6    |  3  |  0  |  3A |
    7    |  3  |  0  |  3B |
    8    |  3  |  0  |  3C |
    9    |  3  |  0  |  3D |
    10   |  3  |  0  |  3E |
    11   |  3  |  0  |  3F |
----------------------------
    1    |  4  |  0  |  31 |
    2    |  4  |  0  |  32 |
    3    |  4  |  0  |  33 |
    4    |  4  |  0  |  34 |
    5    |  4  |  0  |  35 |
    6    |  4  |  0  |  36 |
    7    |  4  |  0  |  37 |
    8    |  4  |  0  |  38 |
    9    |  4  |  0  |  39 |
    10   |  4  |  0  |  3A |
    11   |  4  |  0  |  3B |
    12   |  4  |  0  |  3C |
    13   |  4  |  0  |  3D |
    14   |  4  |  0  |  3E |
    15   |  4  |  0  |  3F |
----------------------------


The appearance of the "Sector" signature i put on the device repeats in the same pattern, until i get tired of looking at it and restart the pc. So my question is why are these sectors repeating themselves.

My memory stick is a Memorex 256MB traveldrive, the fat16 header states the sector per track count as 0x3F, # of heads as 0xFF, and number of sectors is 498,624 dec, and 8 sectors before partition. So with that i calculated the number of tracks to be 32.

Tracks(cylinders) = 32
Heads = 255
Sectors per track = 63

I also notice whenever i open the drive in hex workshop it says the sector counts dont match and possible protection exists on the stick. this message appears on all flash memory devices i have except one very old 8mb compact flash which unfortunely i left at home and wont be able to get it for 2 weeks.