nukenorman Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 I am decently tech savy but my 32 USB stick drive is only showing a total of 5.26 gigs! I reformatted it in both NTFS and Fat 32 to see if it would fix it but to no avail. Anyone know what is going on?? Using windows 8.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FiB3R Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Did you pay ?3 for it? Genuine question, there are a lot of fakes being sold out there. T3X4S 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Montage Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 It sounds to me like a smaller usb drive flashed to report it's a larger one. And don't feel too cheated, I have had this before and not paid "below the odds" prices. We all get duped by things sometimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astra.Xtreme Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Most likely a Chinese knockoff. Flash memory doesn't magically lose capacity. It either all works, or none works. T3X4S 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nukenorman Posted July 18, 2014 Author Share Posted July 18, 2014 I have used this USB drive before only a few times and it has always been 32 gigs would technically format to like 30 gigs or something like that. Its basically a brand new thumb drive only used it one time. It started doing this after I formatted it to .dmg to mess around witih another OS on my PC just for fun and then just decided to abandon the project and just use it for regular storage for photos and videos like I used it before. So I know its not fake as I have used it at full capacity before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SouthGate Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Partitioning? Then again, I'm not sure if you can partition a USB drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FiB3R Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 That extra bit of info helps a lot :) Try using a 3rd party formatting tool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrainDedd Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Try this tool : https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ goretsky 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FiB3R Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Try this tool : https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ Is that not just for SD cards? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordanspringer Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Check in Disk Management to make sure it isn't partitioned. If it is, you can delete the partitions in disk management, then reformat again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Montage Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Flash memory doesn't magically lose capacity. It either all works, or none works. Not true. goretsky 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleNeutrino Veteran Posted July 18, 2014 Veteran Share Posted July 18, 2014 I actually had a lot of these returned when i was working at Micro Center the vendor we bought them from screwed us over. T3X4S 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protocol7 Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 You can use Rufus to repartition it. Chances are when you wrote the dmg to it that created a 6GB partition and left the remainder as free space. You could also do this from Disk Management in Windows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giantpotato Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 I have used this USB drive before only a few times and it has always been 32 gigs would technically format to like 30 gigs or something like that. Its basically a brand new thumb drive only used it one time. It started doing this after I formatted it to .dmg to mess around witih another OS on my PC just for fun and then just decided to abandon the project and just use it for regular storage for photos and videos like I used it before. So I know its not fake as I have used it at full capacity before. Have you actually tried reading back ALL the data you copied? The way the knockoffs work is they allow you to "save" 32GB of data, but after filling up the flash chip it just overwrites the existing data, keeping the file structure intact. So it looks like you have 32GB, but in reality you don't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astra.Xtreme Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Not true. How so? Even if the stick has multiple NAND chips, they are all interconnected. If one chip would stop working, the whole thing would be dead. Flash doesn't work like a regular HDD where bad sectors can be ignored. 32GB to 5GB is a huge reduction. It could be the partitioning is messed up, but since he said he was computer savy, I'm sure he would have looked at that already. I've seen a lot of fakes out there that show up as a high capacity, but can't physically hold that data. Like was said above, the data will overwrite itself to trick you into thinking it works. Once that "hacked" software is torn off, the true capacity will show up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nukenorman Posted July 18, 2014 Author Share Posted July 18, 2014 I tried disk management and only shows 5.26 gigs. Yes in the past I had used the entire 32 gigs to backup videos and pictures so I know its not a fake knockoff usb stick drive. I was using the disk drive to "try" to make a hackintosh when I started having this problems. I gave up on the project and just going to use windows or buy a macbook air and I am no longer interested in trying to make a hackintosh. I just want my 32 gigs back lol. PS: I was only going to make a hackintosh to try out OSX before I bought a real mac so please do not think I am a bad person for wanting to try it. I have given up on the project Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason S. Global Moderator Posted July 18, 2014 Global Moderator Share Posted July 18, 2014 How so? Even if the stick has multiple NAND chips, they are all interconnected. If one chip would stop working, the whole thing would be dead. Flash doesn't work like a regular HDD where bad sectors can be ignored. 32GB to 5GB is a huge reduction. It could be the partitioning is messed up, but since he said he was computer savy, I'm sure he would have looked at that already. I've seen a lot of fakes out there that show up as a high capacity, but can't physically hold that data. Like was said above, the data will overwrite itself to trick you into thinking it works. Once that "hacked" software is torn off, the true capacity will show up. Flash memory works on the cell level. if a particular cell "dies", then the controller knows not to use it and send data to the next cell. the whole chip doesnt go w/ it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nukenorman Posted July 18, 2014 Author Share Posted July 18, 2014 Tried 3rd party software that was suggested also disk management. Still shows the only 5 gigs. I know its not a knockoff because it had 32 gigs before and bought it at walmart along time ago. Guess it is some hardware failure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HawkMan Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 If you formatted it with a dmg file in a osx VM or similar and you chose the wrong disk partitioning system or whatever its called, its a royal pain in the behind reset correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KibosJ Subscriber² Posted July 18, 2014 Subscriber² Share Posted July 18, 2014 Try cleaning the disk: 1. Open CMD 2. Type diskpart 3. Type list disk 4. Find the USB disk from the list 5. Type select disk <disk number> 6. Type clean 7. Using Disk manager, try to format the drive. More than likely if you have used 3rd party tools and they aren't working then the USB stick is faulty, what brand is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigkaye Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 raspbmc installer is a quick and easy way to reset the full partition. disk management should report if its partitioned incorrectly. If that don't work run http://www.heise.de/download/h2testw.html - but generally its opposite, it should be showing 32GB but only be a 5GB NAND Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
123456789A Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Double to check sure there is no hidden ennessay partition. Try using Disk Management and see if there's any funny business going on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PGHammer Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 It sounds to me like a smaller usb drive flashed to report it's a larger one. And don't feel too cheated, I have had this before and not paid "below the odds" prices. We all get duped by things sometimes. Or a larger USB drive formatted as a smaller one - that HAS happenned before, especially with preformatted USB sticks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted July 19, 2014 Share Posted July 19, 2014 OK, so you've done diskmgmt, you know its not a fake, and you dont see any hidden partitions - time to stop wasting time, get a new one, and move on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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