I have a 4GB Imation clip flash drive that has a physical write protect switch and also came with Imation Lock software. I had set up a private partition of appr. 3.5GB leaving a 500MB public partition through Windows 7. I then plugged into my linux Distro (Backtrack 5R3 x64 w/ Gnome) and attempted to format the public partition to ext4. It appeared to have worked.

I plugged back in to Windows 7 and was unable to gain access to my private partition via Imation Lock software. Disk management also showed the full capacity of the drive to be 500MB. I then plugged back into Backtrack and typed fdisk -l into the terminal and it too shows the full capacity of the drive to be 500MB.

Why can I not see the entire capacity? Why will formatting not, in either Windows or linux, erase or restore the whole drive?

Can you post the output of your fdisk -l just to make sure we aren't reading it incorrectly first?

Sorry for the delayed reply. Here is the results of fdisk -l, /dev/sdc is the drive I am referring to:

root@bt:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00055c92

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 30401 244196001 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 1 30401 244195969+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x35f9be58

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2 13 30401 244089856 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb3 30402 60802 244188422+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdd: 8097 MB, 8097103872 bytes
250 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1020 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15500 * 512 = 7936000 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 * 1 67 519219 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 530 MB, 530579456 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 64 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0005bc6d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 64 514048+ b W95 FAT32
root@bt:~#

I find gparted and gsmartcontrol, will often give clues as well.
USB drives are often sold with incorrect capacity and one of Linux programs may show it.
Trev

my flavour = PcLinuxOs KDE

The capacity is/was 4gb when I first got it. The 3.5gb private partition which I created through Imation Lock software seems to have rendered that partition unrecognizable after formatting the remaining 500mb public partition to ext4 via gparted.

I am confused as to how it is possible that a partition <i>seems</i> to have been physically removed from the disk.

I've found Linux OS's infinitely more capable than Windows at w/r disks that Windows just can't but I have never seen or heard of this issue.

A search on Google for
pen drive size fraud
this is the first but there are many more.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Dont...h-Drive-Scam!/
Trev

I finally got Imation support to help me with the issue. They sent me old versions of the Imation Lock software that were not available for download online and after trying a few I was able to gain access to the private partition. For anyone else that has this flash drive or this issue I highly recommend deleting Imation Lock software and using Truecrypt.