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Member #: 24893

My sony flash disk which is 1GB in size was corrupting some files after copying, so I formatted the flash disk with the iformat utility that came on a CD, and now the size has been reduced to 62MB. Can anyone help me to restore the original size of 1GB.

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Member #: 12930

Try reformating again. Also try using Windows Format.

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I have tried to format with windows but I still cant recover the lost space.

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Member #: 24893

I have tried with windows but I cant still recover the lost space.

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it could be a fake product. it's possible that it might eventually collapse and become unusable. that happened to me a couple of days ago.

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I would put money on it being a fake (not a true 1GB capacity). There have been some MAJOR scams going on where Windows reports the stick as a larger size (intentionally duped).

Go into your "My Computer" >"Properties"> "hardware" tab > Device manager and select Disk Drives, select the flash drive...right click on it. "Volumes" tab, click "Populate".

The "Capacity" listed is likely the actual size, the Volume may indicate a different size... thats where windows is fooled.

Sorry to tell you, but I just realized Ive been duped too.

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This is a USB memory stick, right?

The previous two Anonymous Cowards are idiots. There are no "fake drives" or "major scams" going on. The only thing that could remote resemble a scam is the fact that the harddrive and flash memory industry use 1,000 kB instead of 1,024 kB for a megabyte. Although this will make your drive seem smaller than what you "paid for," in no way will it reduce the size by almost a gigabyte like in this case!!

The real problem is with the way you formatted the drive. What you need to do is to go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, and from there go down to Disk Management and locate the flash drive (make sure you pick the right drive!!.)

Make sure that there is only one partition shown on it, and that the partition is ~1GB (if there are any other partitions on the drive, delete them.)

When you've done that, right click on it and pick Format. Set the File system to FAT32 and make sure "Perform a quick format" is not enabled. Leave the rest as it is.

That should fix it.

If that still didn't do it, try downloading and using the format utility at http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html.

While it says it's for a specific HP device, it works for all USB memory sticks. Again, make sure you format it using FAT32.

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Damn man Ive tried your way, but it still wont change the size of my flash disk which is 16mb. At first it was 1gb...

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Member #: 26307

i'd bet money there is a large corrupted partition that windows doesn't recognize on it. i've not done this under windows but under linux(download a live cd if you don't have it already), from a command prompt, first figure out which device is the stick. before plugging in the device type cat /proc/devices plug in the stick. run cat /proc/devices again. you should see a line that was not there before. most likely sda0 or uba0 depending on your distro.
now type fdisk /dev/?da (DO NOT USE HDA, this is the hard drive) p shows the partitions on the drive d deletes a partition.
delete everything there. now the next time you plug it in windows you should be able to reformat it correctly. be sure to use fat32. of course you can do the same thing under linux if you know how.

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Hello,
I am also having the same problem.My 512 mb mp3 player has now started showing 120 mb.When i bought it 4 days ago it showed 500mb(before i formatted it).I tried the live cd(i used suse 9.1) but even in that it shows as 120 mb.Please help.
sharad

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The mod's language is worse than the post

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Member #: 97

Sorry, I must have been in a very emo mood that day.

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i have a 128mb sony flsh disk which reads as 0mb on my xp based computer. what can i do to restore the memory