Unreadable files on a new USB

The drive is 8 gig, branded shintaro and made in china. Unknown files total 691 MB
You may note that some of the files are dated as modified many years in advance. ie 14/ 4 /2054 or 17/5/ 2064.

AV says nothing actionable

Weird. are you saying you bought a new drive but it seems to have stuff on it? I wonder if they palmed off a refurb on you and claimed it was new and, on the refurb, didn't properly delete all of the old files.

Yes brand new. and yes it has stuff on it. could be a refurb I guess, I have windows set to show hidden files. The casing does not show any wear but I guess the chip could be a used one.
That doesnt account for the "last modified" dates though.

Well with spyware, don't they mess with those in order to wreak more havoc? Perhaps it's also improperly deleted spyware (not to be an alarmist, just a thought)?

I wonder if the drive gets some sort of quality testing where they power it up and test it by moving some data around.

i'd open up those ones from the future, they might be stock tips, sports scores or lottery numbers

It's faulty. Take it back. If you got it on ebay it's probably a manufacturers reject or even a fake.

The same idea occored to me.


Purchased from the local newsagent. A regular high street shop. Its possible i suppose for the store to have purchased a batch of knock offs unknowingly. I think i will return it just to see what the story is.

I bought a 4 GB pen drive (HP brand) from a special offer bin from my local Tesco and it was faulty just like yours, I took it back and was given a replacement (from the same bin) and it had exactly the same problem. This time I got my money back and bought one at Staples, which has worked fine for 2 years.

To the best of my knowledge this drive is not faulty. I dont think i ever said it was. I probably should have mentioed that it worked ok specifically.
I've written folder containing 25 files to the drive and these seem readable.
I was simply asking what the odd files might be and/or why they might be there.
My other question is of course if i delete these files willl the drive still work?
I suspect, as engineer suggsted, that its some kind of testing proceedure
(with file names and extensions like .?a, /#$ab^, abc.de and sequentially named files) or quality control that did not get erased.

Thanks for your input.

New info; I was unabl to "safely eject" the usb safely. I recieved a message to th e effect that somethng was using the drive.
I closed my internet browser and disconnected my router
and was able to now use the windows app to safely remove usb device.

I plugged in the USB again and recieved a message to the effect that there were bad sectors in my USB and selected fix.

I now have a list if .CHK file fragments.

I could delete these files however out of curiosity I would like to see if there is anything readable in these files.

Suggest a program to open .chk files.
Will there be anything understandable by a non programmer in these files

I have examined the chk files with chk-mate. A freeware program that purports to allocate the corect file extension for each .chk program.
This program was unable to determine anything useful in this case.
I note that I now have 8000 files @ 4kb on the drive.
In addition Windows explorer identified the USB as 2 different drives E and F.
Only f drive is accessible.

I'll return the drive for a refund tomorrow.

These are the result of Windows attempting to recover "bad sectors" from a corrupted disk. They are very rarely any use for anything. I'm glad you finally realised the drive was faulty. Those crazy characters in the Windows Explorer folder listing in your first post are a classic sign of a corrupted drive. I see you now accept this.

No, but I did.