Formatting flash drive woes.

[comda]

Greetings CH!

Was given a USB (2gb) that had some dual partition setup as it was given away for brand awareness. Anyways. Wanted to format the USB to give it back the full 2gb size and somehow ended up with it showing up as 8mb.

Trying to disk DISKPART it only shows up still as 8mb and I'm not sure how to proceed next. I usually have this problem, when converting USB's from OSX platform to windows.

Any help to get this drive back to its large capacity again?

[Allan]

Here are a number of usb drive formatting utilities, including one that will low level format. You might want to give it a shot. Needless to say, make sure you select the correct drive to format.

[comda]

here where? am I missing something? or was there a hyperlink supposed to be posted?

[Salmon Trout]

Could be a fake 2 GB drive.

[Allan]

Sorry. Here you to: https://howtorecover.me/best-programs-usb-flash-drives-formatting

[comda]

Could be a fake 2 GB drive.

Thought about that as well. I have another one identical. it shows up as 1.86Gb but also has a DVD partition to it. Thats what I tried to get rid of.

[Salmon Trout]

Could be damaged. Flash drives have an uncertain life.

[patio]

Or if it was a corporate issued flash they cannot be formatted...these usually come from companies sellin their wares...where's it from ? ?

[comda]

Or if it was a corporate issued flash they cannot be formatted...these usually come from companies sellin their wares...where's it from ? ?

Was given away at an event from someone that was promoting sober driving. i forget the exact company name. But it wasn't a corporate use kinda deal. Ill have to show you a screen shot of the second one. It has space for 1.86Gb and then a DVD partition that takes you to their website. I dont have them with me at the moment tho.

[patio]

It is what it is then...as i suspected.

[Allan]

Try the app in the link I provided for low level formatting of the drive.

[comda]

Ill give the tools a shot in a moment. wanted to share this before I did. This is what the drive looked like. I selected the top partition and selected format. that's how all this went wrong.

[BC_Programmer]

Not precisely the same issue but there are some additional suggestions on a similar problem here. One poster suggests using "BootICE" to rectify the problem with the flash drive. You might try that if you don't have any luck with the other formatting tools.

[patio]

a 32 G flash drive cost me 8 bucks a few weeks back...

[comda]

Not precisely the same issue but there are some additional suggestions on a similar problem here. One poster suggests using "BootICE" to rectify the problem with the flash drive. You might try that if you don't have any luck with the other formatting tools.

Thanks BC_Programmer I'll Gladly give it a shot.

[comda]

a 32 G flash drive cost me 8 bucks a few weeks back...

Patio, its not about the money. Obviously at this stage of the game $8 is nothing considering i paid a whopping $40 for a 1gb flash drive back in 2007 (my first one back then) but its more about decreasing electronic waste and perhaps learning a thing or two. Since I'm putting together some older machines, i figured smaller drives would be nice to have around for USB limitations, but also why throw out something that potentially works, but is just being difficult? Gotta give it a solid shot before declaring it broken and throwing it out. I do appreciate all the help.

[Lisa_maree]

Hi
Have you considered looking at the usb stick with a disk hex editor. Like can you read the data over the full capacity of the drive? If so can you change the data and save it back. There maybe some areas like the first 100 mb with the promotion stuff  which is not even flash memory, perhaps write once memory . If so then you can partition the drive after this area and format it for use.

Hex editor link    https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

I haven't used it in years as Paragon Disk manager which i use has a hex editor.

Something else i have noted when a pen drive fails this 8mb total capacity is quite common. I wonder if the controller chip has 8mb of cache which is what you are seeing. 

[patio]

Patio, its not about the money. Obviously at this stage of the game $8 is nothing considering i paid a whopping $40 for a 1gb flash drive back in 2007 (my first one back then) but its more about decreasing electronic waste and perhaps learning a thing or two. Since I'm putting together some older machines, i figured smaller drives would be nice to have around for USB limitations, but also why throw out something that potentially works, but is just being difficult? Gotta give it a solid shot before declaring it broken and throwing it out. I do appreciate all the help.

Fair enuff...and well put

[comda]

Try the app in the link I provided for low level formatting of the drive.

I hate to give in, but i do suspect we have a faulty drive.. tried 2 tools so far. both fail even attempting the format

[comda]

Not precisely the same issue but there are some additional suggestions on a similar problem here. One poster suggests using "BootICE" to rectify the problem with the flash drive. You might try that if you don't have any luck with the other formatting tools.

tried this as well, and it still shows as 8mb.. maybe the drive is FUBAR??