USB Drive GHOSTS - A Spreading Mystery

I received an e-mail note from a friend describing a problem she was having with some USB drives she was using with Windows XP. After she inserted the drives, she loaded them up with both files and folders. But then she found she couldn’t access her data, and on the drive itself there were multiple folders named “00000000.000”. She wrote asking for help recovering use of the drives. Unfortunately, I was not able to provide her with a solution.

A little sleuthing on the Internet proved this problem is not an isolated one. While it is affecting various brands of USB drives, I saw Sony mentioned more than once, if not most often. As of now, there doesn’t seem to be a found solution to the problem which often and ultimately results in computers not recognizing the drives at all. There is at least a hint that the problem may be that a number of fake USB drives have hit the market, and this is a manifestation of that scam.

The most interesting clue to me is the file folder naming convention. The folder names contain 8 characters, a period (or dot), and then 3 characters. This corresponds to old DOS naming conventions when file and folder names were limited. That almost makes me suspicious of something within Windows, though I realize it’s easy to blame the OS. Admittedly, the true cause remains to be found. If anyone has any clues, I’d appreciate it if you would drop me a line.