8 GB Flash drive formatted at 3.7 GB

Aaron Konstam akonstam at sbcglobal.net
Sat Dec 19 21:47:36 UTC 2009


On Fri, 2009-12-18 at 23:25 -0600, Robert G. (Doc) Savage wrote: 
> On Fri, 2009-12-18 at 21:58 -0500, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Mikkel <mikkel at infinity-ltd.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/18/2009 01:59 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> > >> I have a Kingston Data Traveler 8GB Flash drive that was previously
> > >> formatted FAT32. I reformatted it ext3 simply by clicking on the icon
> > >> and choosing "Format", but it still has only 3.7 GB available.
> > >>
> > >> Any way around this?
> > >>
> > > You reformatted the existing partition. So it is the same size as
> > > the FAT32 partition. If you want to use the entire drive, you will
> > > need to re-partition it. You will probably want to use gparted for
> > > this. You have the choice of creating a second partition, expanding
> > > the existing partition to use the full drive, or deleting the
> > > current partition, and creating a new one.
> > 
> > Ar first sight, your suggestion made a lot of sense but I checked the
> > drive with gparted and it sees only one partition.
> > 
> > See: http://cjoint.com/data/mtd0lzbfUF.htm
> > 
> > Thanks for your answer!
> 
> Mikkel,
> 
> Have you tried looking at your drive with good ol' fdisk at a root
> command prompt? If your Kingston is like my Vebatim, the output should
> look much like this:
> 
> # fdisk -l /dev/sdb
> 
> Disk /dev/sdb: 8086 MB, 8086618112 bytes
> 249 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 15438 * 512 = 7904256 bytes
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdb1   *           1        1023     7896506   83  Linux
> 
> The key part to look for is the "8086 MB". If your 8 GB thumb drive only
> shows something like 3.7 GB under fdisk, it's borked up internally and
> you're done.
I thing borked is too pessimistic an analysis. There is a 4GB area on
the pen ddrive that is not partitioned nor is it formatted in any way,
according to fdisk. I wold just ignore the 4GB area and don;r worry
about it. 
> 
> Otherwise, use fdisk's letter commands ("m" for menu) to delete all old
> and create one new max partition of type 83 and "w"rite the new
> partition table back to the drive. Then use mke2fs to format that new
> partition.
> 
> --Doc Savage
>   Fairview Heights, IL
> 
--
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I hope you millionaires are having fun! I just invested half your life
savings in yeast!!
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Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam at sbcglobal.net




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