Arch Linux

chaosgeisterchen

Member

From: Kefermarkt, Upper Austria

Registered: 2006-11-20

Posts: 550

[solved] Storage size of USB pendrive shrinked

Good morning,

sorry about the strange topic title, but I do not really find appriopate words to describe my issue.

The story is the following:
I used a 2 GB usb pendrive to install the arch installation image on it (2008.06), following the beginners guide and the dd command. The usb pendrive contained expendable data before executing the dd command (meaning: It was not empty). After installation the installation data on the USB pendrive became obsolete and I thought about adding some files to the current ones - but it told me that there were only 4 MB of free space left - with a total storage capacity of 332 MB, which is about 1.5 GB less than usual.

OK I thought and ran mkfs.msdos /dev/sdb1 to reformat it. Still, it has only 332 MB of storage space. Same information when trying to format it under Windows XP and Vista.

Question here: Does the dd command physically shrink the storage capacity of an usb pendrive and if not: Is there any way to restore the original storage capacity (by detecting it as 2 GB removable media)?

Thanks for your suggestions in adavance
cg

Last edited by chaosgeisterchen (2008-09-11 11:19:11)

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celestary
Intel Core2Duo E6300 @ 1.86 GHz
kernel26
KDEmod current repository

wuischke

Member

From: Suisse Romande

Registered: 2007-01-06

Posts: 630

Re: [solved] Storage size of USB pendrive shrinked

I think this is a partition problem. Delete the current partition and create a new one with the full size of your drive.

chaosgeisterchen

Member

From: Kefermarkt, Upper Austria

Registered: 2006-11-20

Posts: 550

Re: [solved] Storage size of USB pendrive shrinked

I think this is a partition problem. Delete the current partition and create a new one with the full size of your drive.

Thanks, I found the solution in not formatting /dev/sdb1 but /dev/sdb instead to regain the hidden storage space within the 'hidden partition'.

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celestary
Intel Core2Duo E6300 @ 1.86 GHz
kernel26
KDEmod current repository

chillu

Member

Registered: 2009-01-18

Posts: 33

Re: [solved] Storage size of USB pendrive shrinked

Thanks! Helped me too.