"Where did the other 990,000,000 Mb go?" Topic

I have a Verbatim StorNGo 1Gb Flash Drive.

It only has 9.8Mb of memory available with 100% free.

There are no hidden folders to see and no internal recycle bin to empty.

Reformatting and performing a disc scan did nothing to improve the memory. I cannot conduct a defrag since it is telling me it is a FAT12 and not a FAT32.

Any ideas on how to find this lost memory space or is it a lost cause?

Not that it is a big deal in the long run since buying a new flash drive is cheap. I don't want to succumb to this challenge.

Flash memory fails eventually. Every time you write to a memory location it gets one step closer to death.

Most of the time it is a slow process where one small section at a time fails and you would presumably notice the reduction in capacity well before you have lost 99% – especially since it normally takes anywhere from 10000 to 1 million writes (depending on the type of memory used) before a given section dies.

In your case, I would assume a manufacturing defect.

That's weird. FAT12 is a problem, though. I'm pretty sure it can't address 1 GB.

It never had it. No drive or chip has the stated memory. It's a marketing trick. They round up. Do a search. It's been highly documented for many years. So don't sweat the 'memory loss'. :-)

Zyphyr –

This is not a new flash drive and it is not my personal property. It is from work where anybody in the office can use it. This is the first time I've had it in my posession.

I am guessing previous user(s) have damaged it somehow someway.

9.8 MB available out of a 1 GB device with no files is more than a rounding problem. So far as that goes, between computers using 2^10 as 1 K and humans using 10^3 as 1 K and the overhead taken up by the FAT, the numbers will never jive. Back in the day, hard drives used to come with maps of the bad sectors that you'd need to enter before performing the (overnight) low-level format. You'd also lose space to that.

I had an old Flash drive that mounted as 2 partions (drive letters) one was small about 2MB and was FAT12 the other was larger (100sMB) and was FAT32.

Check to see if there isn't another drive letter showing on your PC.

Do you have an IT dept, or is it a small company?

If you have an IT dept – get them to resolve it. If not you could try formatting the drive yourself.

If it is as fred12df says, you may have to go to your Disk Management utility, usually by right clicking on My Computer, selecting Manage. Then select Disk Management and changing the drive letter of the other partition as it may be trying to use a drive letter that is already assigned on your system.

It never had it. No drive or chip has the stated memory. It's a marketing trick. They round up. Do a search. It's been highly documented for many years. So don't sweat the 'memory loss'. :-)

And then they sell it to us "FOR LESS THAN FORTY DOLLARS!!!"
i.e. $39.99 USD

The IT folks are work are not keen on wasting time on such an inexpensive piece of equipment since there is always a crisis somewhere else. To their credit, they did look at the situation but came up blank, too.

I'll take it home and try to see if there is a hidden partition like Fred and Delthos mentioned since I do not have appropriate administrative rights at work.

What Delthos says is probably correct – Windows has a nasty bug where USB devices will try to use a drive letter that is already in use. I'd forgotten about this as haven't had to deal with it for a year or so – but did have a PC that did this all the time.

Follow Delthos' instructions to hopefully correct it – it is quick to do.