Hello, All!

I have USB Flash A-DATA PD4 2Gb. I copied all data in my notebook and umounted it. After I plug in notebook for writing. But flash is not recognized as disk (dmesg output):

usb 4-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
usb 4-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 4
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB 2.0 Flash Disk 0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sda: too big for this kernel. Use a kernel compiled with support for large block devices.
SCSI device sda: 0 512-byte hdwr sectors (0 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sda
sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

Were with worked flash:

usb 4-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB 2.0 Flash Disk 0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
SCSI device sda: 4030464 512-byte hdwr sectors (2064 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
SCSI device sda: 4030464 512-byte hdwr sectors (2064 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: sda1
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sda
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0


I download from A-DATA site utility for formating flash disk for Windows. It recognized and I formated flash as 2Gb disk. After Linux can see USB storage device, but only 211Mb (10% full capacity).
I try use fdisk. My flash were (H/S/C) 255/63/250, but now only 255/63/25.
I try formated flash by A-DATA utility again. But it recognize my flash as 211Mb disk.
How I can return my 2Gb capacity?

A couple of ideas come to mind:

1. From linux, format it as ext2 and see what capacity you get. I think the command is mkfs.ext2

2. Possibly the mbr is incorrect. Not invalid, but incorrect. From linux, "zero" the device using "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/device" without quotes and replace device with the drive's actual device node (sda, sdb,...) Then from Windows use the format utility. Or from linux try to use fdisk or cfdisk to create the partition and use mkfs.fat to format it.

mkfs.ext2 - capacity 211Mb only.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
dd: writing to `/dev/sda': No space left on device
412673+0 records in
412672+0 records out
211288064 bytes (211 MB) copied, 187.579 seconds, 1.1 MB/s

# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 211 MB, 211288064 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 806 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 832 212976 6 FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(830, 15, 32) logical=(831, 15, 32)


For such new usb flash disk:
# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 2063 MB, 2063597568 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 250 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 251 2015200+ 6 FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(249, 254, 63) logical=(250, 225, 39)


If I change number of heads/sectros/cylinders to 255/63/250 by fdisk (in expert mode) then after unplug/plug usb device I have 255/63/25 only.

Oh!

I beleive you need to DD or format the partition.
That would be something like.
If you are using windows to format it then just plug it in and windows will take care of it. I would format it FAT not ext3. It says it is now FAT16, that's because it is only 2GB.

Or you can Fdisk,Cfdisk it and then format it FAT.

How are you trying to mount the drive now in Linux? Should be something like
The output of dmesg says it is sda1