formatted to wrong size

Status
Not open for further replies.
B

bennollan

I had some corrupted files on a 4GB flash drive and it got formatted to 474MB and I need to know how to format it back to 4GB
 
I just tried this and it didn't work if someone has a unformat utility or the HP format utility beacuse all the links for it have a 404 error
 
i had the same experience... first my flash disk is 1GB then after doing something.. like formatting the flashdisk it just became 233 Mb..
Now im suffering to a small size storage... can anyone help?,,,,plz.
 
you guys also can use a program like partition magic....

also newbs - DO NOT piggy back questions.
 
Try Windows to Formatt

Have you tried formatting the drive using the one built into windows? Just right-click on the drive (For XP) and click formatt. I think there are some settings in there that you can play around with too.

It's a long shot, but it's worth a go. Let me know if it works
 
Hmmm.. Might require some hardware hacking to get the data back to what it was originally.. It's like what the asians do with their cheap 8GB drives for $50, They hack the hardware so it says its 8GB, but you try to put anything bigger than 512mb and you will encounter 1000's of problems and errors..

I have no idea how to do a hardware hack, I just know about it.. Another you could try doing is ringing up the manufacturer of the flash drive.. I'm sure 1000's of people have rang up with the same problem as you.. They should be able to help.

If not, then I don't know sorry :(
 
that doesn't help him.. Ring the manufacturer, I recon thats your best bet..

Another thing i just thought of.. Did it get formatted in NTFS or FAT32?

bennollan said:
I just tried this and it didn't work if someone has a unformat utility or the HP format utility beacuse all the links for it have a 404 error
Click to expand...

Hey,

Download this, I believe it's a hewlett packard Format Utility.. The link and download work too, I tried it! :)

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/20306.html
Let me know how you go
 
ok I just tried this and its still 474 MB, I think if I could get it to the raw format then it would go back to 4GB

there are chinese knockoff flash drives that they only put 512MB of flash memory in and they formatt it to have 1 GB and sell it so I know it's possible
 
bennollan said:
there are chinese knockoff flash drives that they only put 512MB of flash memory in and they formatt it to have 1 GB and sell it so I know it's possible
Click to expand...

That's hardware hacking. Even though they format it to 1GB, it still only has 512MB. If you try to put anything past 512MB, you will get data errors, it won't be possible.

So they get a 512MB chip, hack it to say it's 1GB, then when people have errors, they blame it on hardware and deny ever hacking it.
 
bennollan said:
there are chinese knockoff flash drives that they only put 512MB of flash memory in and they formatt it to have 1 GB and sell it so I know it's possible
Click to expand...
That is your problem right there then. Your drive was never a true 4GB. No matter what you do you won't make it store 4GB. Give up and spend the money for a real drive.
 
bennollan said:
there are chinese knockoff flash drives that they only put 512MB of flash memory in and they formatt it to have 1 GB and sell it so I know it's possible
Click to expand...

Did you ever put 500MB or more on your flash drive?
 
I put 2 1/2 GB of music on it but when I was deleting some of them we had a power outage and so there were corrupted files on it and the only way to get rid of them was to reformat it
 
Are you sure the files were corrupted because of the power outtage? Because that is a typical sign of hardware hacking. Anything you try to put over the REAL disks limit gets corrupted
 
I think the file table in the flash drive is corrupt.

Here's what I'd do. Delete everything on the flash drive manually. Then run file system check on it. See if that corrects it. If not, get PTedit.exe and manually inspect the flash drive file table.
 
Just for the info, next time do a low level format. The same thing happened to me when I formatted my 4gb sdhc card in the Lg Viewty. It partitioned the card to 2gb and 2gb and locked both of them so I couldn't really do anything. (not partition,nothing). I downloaded a low level format tool from hddgurus dot com and did the format and voila! next time I inserted the card it was recognised as an unpartitioned 4gb flash drive! Partitioned,formatted and now it works like it should. That tip is ONLY IF( bold to IF) it's not a hardware hack to your flash drive. If it should've been 4gb(or any size) from the beggining,then try it ;)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Sport996
How to safely overclock an AMD Athlon II X2 240 processor :)
Replies
3
Views
162
Nelson28
N
E
I have been taken over by a software called Astanda using XML to Log everything and roaming to an SQL server.
Replies
0
Views
474
eriksnyman1
E
M
Insufficient disk space
Replies
3
Views
91
Mark Fuller
M

Latest posts

Back